MySpace for the Sandlot Set

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on social networking sites for kids." From the article: "Parents are paying more heed to the kiddie sites because they know their children will learn, work, and live online. Computer skills such as social networking are becoming as much a part of the success-in-life portfolio as addition and subtraction, says Herbert S. Lin, senior scientist at the National Research Council. Parents' support of these sites stems in part from the idea that it's better for their kids to get their online introductions in a controlled environment -- as many of these sites promise -- than venture into the cyberjungle alone."

Best way to teach about the net...

[LiquidCoooled]

is to be there with them.
Show them whats out there, explain things, guide them and most of all - don't let them out on their own.
You wouldn't consider letting your youngster go playing on the streets on a saturday night, so do the same with online stuff.

Computer skill..?

[mangobrain]

Since when was "social networking" a computer skill? Kids have been going to friend's houses, going to youth clubs, going to music/dance/martial arts etc. classes after school, going to each other's birthday parties, and just generally hanging out for a very, very long time. They've also been making pen friends. I once met someone on IRC from the other side of the world, and although that initial meeting was online, almost all of our correspondence from then until losing touch years later was by letter (the real, pen and paper kind).

To my mind, a "computer skill" is a skill related to the intrinsics of computers themselves, be it hardware or software, or the ability to do something you actually or effectively cannot do without computers. Simply knowing how to use computers is "computer literacy"; for me, at least, the distinction is the very reason we have two separate terms.

Most kids who want MySpace already use it.

[gblues]

They just lie about their age when they sign up. I know half a dozen local kids who have done this. Since MySpace doesn't do any verification, the admins essentially have to catch 'em in the act--not hard since most of the kids who do this are up-front about it, but first you have to find the profiles in a sea of legitimate ones.

Nathan