Summer Camps Join Fray Against MySpace

The New York Times reports that now even summer camps are raising concerns about social networking sites such as MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook. Camps are worried about the ramifications of certain activities being associated with their summer programs after revealing pictures or postings are made online. Some camps are banning digital cameras, while others are instructing campers and parents to remove references to the camps from blog postings. Of course, the camps take the stance that they are merely trying to protect the children:

"The information that kids share today often is personal and private information that allows predators to track them down. We're also concerned about cyber-bullying."

Banning progress does not work

[the_furman]

It's perfectly understandable that summer camp administrators are concerned. There's cause for concern. I think, however, that trying to ban kids from socializing online and discussing their camp experiences is definitly not the way to go. Social networking sites like Myspace are a reality, and trying to ban reality never works. Teaching kids about safe behaviour on the 'net would be a much more viable option, IMHO.

here's an idea

[grapeape]

Why not provide better supervision of the kids at summer camp so that there is less dirt to post about? Oh wait that would require someone to actually take some responsibility...

Re:here's an idea

[bunions]

Yes, we should be watching the children 24-7 and never let them make mistakes. That's a sure way to raise kids that are smart and self-reliant.

Re:No pictures?

[GigsVT]

The new world order IS a mess of misorganization and incompetence.

Just look at the USSR, it could have been described as exactly that. Nepotism, bribes, kickbacks, major corruption, social programs that are just jobs for the incompetent, spying on your political foes... It wasn't a sleek, well oiled government, it was a government bursting at the seams under the weight of corruption.

I mean just the other day, there was a prison shootout, not between the guards and prisioners, but between federal agents trying to shut down the huge number of corrupt guards.

The real criminals aren't the ones behind the bars, it's the ones in power.

Much like the fat guy in "Ernest Goes to Camp"...

[Stick_Fig]

...it sure feels like they're trying to solve all their problems by throwing Eggserronious on them.

Let's not blame MySpace for any behavioral/discipline/legal problems. The real problem is that, much like the Last Chance kids from "Camp," you spent all your time allowing the older kids to treat them like dirt, and only Ernest (despite the whole posion ivy incident) really cared about them -- enough so that he was able to stop Kramer Construction singlehandedly.

God, I love that movie.

Re:Banning progress does not work

[mantar]

Absolutely correct, and while I think it's cute that camps are taking an interest in the kids that attend, where are the parents in all of this? There's no doubt that these social networking sites can be dangerous for teenage girls who can't keep their lid shut about personal issues (have you ever met a teenage girl who could?), so why are parents not taking an active interest in their children's online activity?

A new age

[celardore]

We all have digital cameras, camera phones etc... It's just a part of technology becoming more and more a part of our lives. It needn't be a bad thing, summer camp is probably one of the best places a teen can capture memories to show the family. Just because bad stuff can be done with these things doesn't mean an outright ban should follow.

You're not allowed to take a camera into most swimming pools now, however much you want to capture your child first swimming. A few bad apples...

Re:Need to blame someone

[TubeSteak]

"[Kids] were some things that we found that some of the kids posted that were really kind of nasty, saying bad things about counselors"

It's called CYA (Cover Your Ass)

All kinds of shit goes on at summer camps that would cause parents to freak.

The administrators running these camps don't want those kinds of details to come out, since we know that people (regardless of age) are stupid when it comes to pictures on MySpace, FaceBook, Etc. It'd be a huge liability issue on their part. parents would be asking "how could you let [bad behavior caught on camera] happen?"

"For the children" is just the easiest way to get everyone onboard.

The BUCK stops with you, the parent...

[posterlogo]

...and if the summer camps claim they want to help you out, that's their right to do so, and you can decide whether or not they are being overly bureaucratic/paranoid or not. What neither the summer camps nor the parents should be allowed to do, is sue MySpace, etc. because of their failings as parents. In the end, it's almost always inadequate parenting that causes their children to engage in risky behavior.

Treating symptoms?

[greatcelerystalk]

Camp directors are attempting to do two things, according to the article: treat the symptoms of a problem and censor negative opinions about their organizations.

If photographs of a camp and its attendees have managed to wind their way onto an adult website, I have no qualms with the camp in questions taking action to have the material removed, however, it seems the camp might want to devote more resources to educating attendees about safety. I also don't see any issue with confiscating digital cameras, even though many children who've gone to camp in the past were able to take photographs.

I certainly take issue with camps' attempts to censor negative opinion and activities which take place outside of the camp and are unrelated to the camp. The article makes it seem like these camps are asking both attendees and counselors to censor their outside activities so as not to make the camp "look bad."

Re:Need to blame someone

[hackstraw]

I'm getting sick and tired of hearing parents, school counselors, child psychologists, etc blaming MySpace for virtually everything bad that could occur in a teens life.

Me too. The ironic thing is that those are the parents that simply should not have kids either.

I mean, since when will the old standby of waiting at a school bus or going to a shopping mall and pulling the "I'm sorry Johnny, your parents were just in an accident, and I was asked to take you to the hospital to see them" or similar trick stop working?

Yet again, more evidence that logic and reason go out the window when "computers" or "online" is involved. Every week I see kids missing on milkboxes or on those token mailers with the "Have you seen me?" on them. And you know what? I'm pulling this number out of the air, but its probably pretty close, over 90% of those missing kids were taken by most likely a parent or someone else they know. The others simply had such shitty parents that they just decided to fend for themselves.

Lets just put all kids and their parents in prisons and call it even.

Observation.

[Stalyn]

There is a mantra that exists on /. and perhaps society as a whole that the simple solution to problems akin to MySpace is proper parenting. I think it is a gross oversimplification to think being a "good parent" is going to solve all children related problems. In the same way it is an oversimplification to solely blame MySpace.

I think the solution sits somewhere in the middle. That MySpace should make a concerted effort to work with parents to ensure their children's safety. Also parents need to educate themselves and take more of a role in their child's internet activity. Also there is a third step where all of us need to understand the disconnect between the Internet and RL is illusionary. What you do on the Internet has RL consequences and vice versa.

Re:The camera ban might be a good idea.

[Maelwryth]

Yes, why is she wearing bikini in a shower? Probably followed by whats wrong with a picture of a girl wearing bikini in a shower.

Absolutely not.

[Skadet]

I know "protecting the children" is a cliche, but doesn't it kind of apply here?

No.

"Protecting civil rights" is a cliche that DOES apply. That's why this should be called for the bullshit that it is.

Camps are FUN

[kyc]

Just let them post their photos. Being paranoid doesn't work most of the time. And with exponential growth of these sites; can you stop it ? NO Should you stop it ? Questionable; Let these youngsters have fun to the bottom; and share it. How dangerous can it be after all ?

Operation "Suck All Fun out of Being a Kid"

[OverflowingBitBucket]

Excellent! Operation "Suck All Fun out of Being a Kid" is coming along nicely. First we open sites that let kids sign up to potential lawsuits if they speak to anyone else- they might be talking to an online predator! Next, we make sure they can't talk about anything that might affect a commercial interest. Good to see phase two is proceeding according to schedule. Given time, if our operation is successful, all that these kids will be able to post is "Current Mood: Depressed". Which strangely enough, given the crap we're dumping on them, will probably be quite accurate.

Isn't it time to reign in the lawyers and the mollycoddlers?

Good god! Myth Destroyed!

[kaiwai]

I thought this whole 'summer camp' thing was a myth, but they actually exist over there

Why the hell do these places exist? I mean, good lord, when I was a teenager, during the holidays, I worked, went to the movies and kept my self occupied, without the need of my parents spending money hand over fist to some over hyped establishment.

Geeze, I really wonder sometimes why parents have kids if all they do is boot their kids off to a camp each year, simply to avoid them.

Amen to that

[Julian Morrison]

Nowadays children have negative civil rights. They have the right to demand to be oppressed. Other people's civil rights get taken away to keep children "protected". It's fricken' ridiculous. The world they live in is so much worse than a police state it's crazy. They're herded, imprisoned, propertyless, practically property themselves. Every man's hand is against them. If I were a kid I'd look on digital technology as the last small bastion of genuine personal liberty, and I'd be thinking seriously about organizing an armed revolt.

Re:The camera ban might be a good idea.

[QCompson]

Go to webshots.com and search for "cheer camp shower". Need I say more?

Oh noezz!! A scary intraweb predator is going to see a picture of girls in bikinis and track them all down and rape and kill them! Everyone panic!!! We need more laws and restrictions, quick!

Need I say more?

Yes, please do, because I don't know what the hell your point is.

Re:The camera ban might be a good idea.

[R3d M3rcury]

Okay. I did.

What we have here is a bunch of girls who took pictures of themselves and friends in the shower. All were wearing bikinis. In other words, I could get the same "thrill" by going to any public beach.

I suppose you have to say more. I'm a bit lost as to what is "bad" about this. It looks like all the people involved were willing participants.

Re:Observation.

[pla]

the simple solution to problems akin to MySpace is proper parenting.

Not at all - The simple solution to 99% of MySpace problems rests in recognizing that the "problems" don't exist in the first place. With the exception of the twits threatening to extort MySpace and posting about it thereupon, every other "problem" involved some busybody 3rd party authority-figure overstepping their bounds and panicking over harmless boasting and dick-waving.

So Little Jimmy posed with a bottle of Jack - Can you prove he drank it and that it contained actual whiskey, rather than drinking cherry kool-aid out of a previously empty bottle? Can you even prove the punk in the poor-quality overly-compressed picture, wearing the same style of clothes and hair as every other 14YO male in the country, as the same Jimmy?

So Susie has a list of people she hates and wants dead. We all (at least mentally) kept lists of people we hated and wanted dead. We just didn't act on them. Nor would Susie - Her "enemies" stand a better chance of dying in a freak accident involving snakes on a plane, than of her snapping one day and reenacting Doom down her school's corridors.

So a 40 year old guy has a MySpace page saying he likes cartoons. Ever met a Disney employee? They really do act like that, no hidden pedophile motives involved. And if he admits to playing with Legos - My god! Call the swat team, we might just... gasp... have an engineer on our hands!


That MySpace should make a concerted effort to work with parents to ensure their children's safety

Sure - Just as soon as those parents start paying MySpace to act as babysitters. Seriously - We have a basic issue of "responsibility" here, specifically, who bears it. Parents have a responsibility to raise their kids. MySpace does not, regardless of how many "tweens" use it.

MySpace represents the modern equivalent of playground gossip and note-passing. And, like it or not, the swingset doesn't censor its occupants, nor does the pencil refuse to write down obscenities.



What you do on the Internet has RL consequences and vice versa.

No - What you stupidly do on the 'net under your own name has consequences. Not that, if really motivated, you couldn't figure out my RL identity - I've probably given more than enough info without you even needing to leave Slashdot to track me down. But you can't just type in my real name in Google and see 183 reasons to fire me, 26 reasons to arrest me, and four reasons to execute me for treason (hey, don't forget that nontrivial crypto used to count as "munitions"). If these stupid kids would figure out the same thing, and do just a teensy bit to obscure their identities (no real names, blur faces and obvious location-signs in photos), we would all-but-stop-hearing about the evils of MySpace.

The problem?

[dmdb]

MySpace is a communication tool, no more, no less. It doesn't create these incidents, they have been there all along. Perhaps they have changed with time, perhaps not. That however is fairly irrelevant, I'm sure we've all done things in our time which we'd prefer not to be published on the internet. For me, perhaps fortunatly, the internet had not caught on to social networking during my teens in quite the same way as it has now. All MySpace does, in the same way that other similar sites do is create a little more transparancy in the system and is could be likened to having a delayed CCTV system from the camps piped into the parents home. MySpace is not to blame, should not be held responsible etc for any actions that happen at the camps, it simply puts practices and actions which have happened in the camps more into the public domain. 'What happens at camp stays at camp' is no longer such an easy oath to keep, is this the fault of MySpace, no, this is part of growing up, everyone makes mistakes, most I would like to believe learn from these. We all have experiences that have shaped our current position in life for better or for worse, MySpace does not alter this it simply treads the path where mainstream news cannot easily reach.

Bzzzt. Wrong.

[the_furman]

Disagree completely. You simply cannot push the burden of chaperoning kids onto Myspace the same way you can't expect phone companies to monitor calls to make sure the conversation is safe. That's silly. All Myspace is is a communications medium and there's absolutely no way they, as a company, can ensure that all the communication that takes place within the medium happens to be safe.

Also note that in my post above I did not single out parenting as a solution to the problem. In fact, I've never even mentioned parenting, even though it's certainly a part of the solution. The most important factor involved is education, for parents and for the kids. People need to be taught about the risks and ramifications involved in sharing personal information online.
This is not to say that sharing personal information online is always a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with being a public figure, and each public figure decides for themselves just how much they want to reveal. Some chose to remain anonymous while others post naked pictures of themselves along with phone numbers. What seems to happen quite a bit with Myspace and the like is people don't realize just how much they're revealing and how this information can be used against them. This is where education comes in.

Baning a communication medium is not the way to go. Not only is it the wrong thing to do, but it's also futile. Kids will post their camp expariences regardless of whether or not it's against the rules. Pushing them underground, so to say, achieves nothing.

Re:here's an idea

[LordLucless]

Exactly the same thing you could do if the kid in question run off a hundred photocopiers and dropped in them in mailboxes around town. And it wouldn't be complaining that the local library should somehow be made to supervise anyone using their photocopiers.

Re:And one time, on My Space

[cyberscan]

Just as paedophiles are profiled on the web, so are their victims. rather than using paedophilia as an excuse for governments to pound us back into the stone age, governments should stop worrying about dropping paedophiles' docs and start worrying about doing its job locking up or killing child rapists. Governments have always used dangerous people as an excuse to take our freedoms away rather than doing something about the dangerous people. MySpace should remain open and children should continue to post online while at the same time, authorities should do away with those who are guilty of raping kids (or anyone else for that matter).

Re:A new age

[Lehk228]

and yet the pervs camp across the street (or a quarter mile away) with a 200mm lens and get far better pics than a cheap digicam can get at close range

yet again regulation solves nothing

Re:Amen to that

[Geekbot]

That's why I got into technology. I remember back in the days of Q-Link, Compuserve, and BBS. I was 12, I knew no one who could tell me anything about computers. No one also could talk with me honestly. I could get online, find out anything I wanted to, be an adult as far as anyone else knew. It was the only escape for me. 20 years later he I still am, conversing with anonymous strangers in a forum/board format, exchanging knowledge over which maybe many of us would still be a little bit persecuted over in real life.

In doing so, I think perhaps I'm not the only guy, who as a kid, found that computers allowed us to socialize, learn new things, and do all of this in an open way that mainstream society might fear.

Re:Observation.

[Firehed]

If these stupid kids would figure out the same thing, and do just a teensy bit to obscure their identities (no real names, blur faces and obvious location-signs in photos), we would all-but-stop-hearing about the evils of MySpace.

Well, as long as typical Myspace page design continues to be considered just a faux pas rather than an evil.

You nailed the problem though - stupid kids. It's the stupid ones that can't realize that meeting that friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend from Mypsace might not be the best idea, and are undoubtedly the ones that are either too lazy or stupid to take those basic precautions. I could post my picture along with my real name and address, and probably have nothing come of it when I don't open the door for that creepy-looking guy with a license plate from the other side of the country.

Put the blame where it belongs

[obnoxiousbastard]

We try to blame everyone- bad parents, bad teachers, bad coaches, bad dirty ole men on the internet, bad ole technology, etc, ad nauseum.

BUT WE FAIL TO >>BLAME THE BRATS
Our society has the idea that anyone under 18 is pure and innocent until something corrupts them and that is pure and simple HORSE CRAP.

Teens have been and always will be 1) sexual beings AND 2) immature. The combination of both is a recipe for trouble.

Modern society thinks that teen pregnancy, teen sex and teen crime is all some shocking, new phenemenon unique to our times. Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps the technologies have changed but the people using them have not.

People are essentially the same dumb animals that have made the same dumb mistakes for the past 5 millinia of recorded history. All signs show that they will continue to do so.

The model for Michangelo's [i]David[/i] was a teen prostitute that was one of Michangelo's personal favorites. What does this have to do with this subject?

It proves rather elegently that this teen drama crap has been going on a long time before MySpace ever reared its ugly head.

Blame the people, not the black box.

Re:And one time, on My Space

[jez9999]

governments should [...] start [...] killing

Barbarian.

Re:Observation.

[Ash Vince]

"If these stupid kids would figure out the same thing, and do just a teensy bit to obscure their identities (no real names, blur faces and obvious location-signs in photos), we would all-but-stop-hearing about the evils of MySpace."

And start hearing about the fictitious evils of some other fad that most people won't understand so will believe.

Lets face it, the original family who are trying to dredge myspace through the courts are only doing it because there is a chance they will get paid. The lawyers representing them just smell a buck, but at least they will work for their money.

And the only reason this story gets so much coverage in the press is that the media love pandering to ignorance. Especially when it helps their circulation.

Re:Observation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe MySpace should chaperone the kids when they go to meet people they have met online.

Maybe parents should ask just why their little girl needs a cross country plane ticket. But that would actually require talking to their kid... easier to just leave a couple hundred bucks on the table and head to work, then send an email from work to "have fun".

Re:Pedophiles

[Thing 1]

I don't think you'll eliminate pedophilia without eliminating all humans. It's a simple equation, and evidence can be seen in the animal kingdom:

1. Females cannot be impregnated for some time after birth (there are (at least) two reproductive stages in the female's lifecycle).

2. Males prefer to raise children of their own creation (otherwise they're spending their own resources to support someone else's genes--sure, adoption works, even in the animal kingdom, but it's not the rule).

3. If a male impregnates a female the instant she is able to, then his genes will be carried on by the offspring.

4. If a male attempts to impregnate a day later, then the chances that another male has impregnated are higher, and not only is the sex act wasted energy, any additional energy the male spends in child-rearing is wasted energy as well (from the perspective of the male's genes).

5. If a male attempts to impregnate a day earlier, then only the sex act is wasted energy.

Therefore, males tend to "prefer" to err on the side of "too early" because it results in the least wasted energy/resources. One day early will not matter much, on a human time-scale; a few years likely will matter, in terms of potential scarring (physically and emotionally).

I've been modded down when presenting the above equation before. I don't mind another down-mod, but I would like an explanation: what in the above is inaccurate?