Sunday, July 16, 2006

I joined MySpace.com at my best friend's urging. It will be fun, she promised. So I quickly signed up and asked her to create a fantastic layout for my new page. I typed a couple of personal tidbits about myself, and 15 minutes later, my page was beating with pink and green flowers and Cat Stevens music.

The next day, still flush with excitement about finally joining the MySpace revolution, I overheard some kids in the seventh-period world geography class I teach talking about the Web site. I eagerly announced that I, too, had a MySpace page. Soon I was connecting to current and past students through the Web site. That's when I started to realize the difference between my MySpace and their MySpace.

Unlike my generation, which tends to use MySpace to keep in touch with friends across the world, the generation of students I teach uses MySpace as a prolonged, entirely unsupervised locker break. This adolescent MySpace is filled with profanity, dangerously personal information, sexually explicit pictures, drug references and, in some cases, even pornographic videos. Usually these posts are riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. But the message is clear: Anything goes. During this locker break, there are no hall monitors, no teachers watching for trouble and, clearly, few parents who are anywhere nearby.

As a teacher of these talented young people, I am uneasy about this virtual world and unsure of my role in protecting my students from the damage it can cause. The other day, a previous A student of mine (soon to be a high school sophomore) posted a sexually explicit bulletin for his friends. The posting urged friends to answer 10 questions about ideal locations for having sex, favorite positions, preferable sexual acts and more. When I contacted this student about the offensive message and directed him to remove it, he replied that he posted this message because it was "fun" and that he did not really see anything wrong with it. Despite his reaction, he did heed my request and deleted the posting soon after. This troubling experience forced me to realize that these children are not ready to live unsupervised. I would not condone any 14- or 15-year-old living alone in an apartment and driving a car. So why do we allow these children to live independent lives online?

And so, this fall, during parent-teacher conferences and back-to-school night, I am going to provide every parent I meet with detailed directions for creating a MySpace profile, making MySpace friends, posting comments and reading bulletins. And for those young adults such as myself who want to take back MySpace from the too young, send me a message or comment. You know exactly where to find me.

-- Cheryl MacPherson

Alexandria

teaches eighth grade at Gunston Middle School in Arlington.