College Admission: MySpace

When Mario Sylvander, principal and college counselor (MO), googled a student from another school who was going to interview him for a school newspaper article, he found more than he wanted to know. The student’s blog listed social life details—including how much the student loves beer.

MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, LiveJournal and Friendster are popular social networking sites that offer free Web pages. MySpace alone boasts more than 60 million users with thousands of people joining every day. On these sites, people post profiles and photos, sharing details with friends, and often, with anyone else who looks them up.

As Sylvander found out, some of the student pages have information that can be controversial. Most blogs are not like this, though. Students usually chat about school, music and their friends, basically an online diary. Yet, even this information can put students in danger. 

Most of the sites require that users be a certain age, 14 for MySpace. However, since there is no way to prove age, anyone can open an account.

“I KNOW a lot of kids lie about their ages. When I looked at my little sister’s MySpace, at first she said she was 19. But all of her middle school friends lied about their ages too, most saying they were 16–19 years old,” said Ashley Fait, a freshman at Marquette University (WI). “People do it, either because the site requires them too or because they want to see if it works, if they can get away with ‘being’ older. I know the girls in middle school want to see if they attract any of the older guys.”

Just as students can pretend to be someone they’re not, predators can do the same. Multiple accounts of predators posing on MySpace to attract young people have happened all over the country. With the student’s interests and friends posted in their profile, it’s easy for them to manipulate vulnerable teens by pretending to share their interests.

Most students believe that they are well versed in the dangers and that “stupid” kids are the ones posting personal information. It doesn’t take much, though, for a predator to be able to find your child.

Sites like Facebook allow students to list their college courses and network with other people in the same classes. Once someone knows their school and schedule and has access to photo, they’re easy to find.

What you can do:

Talk to your children about making their profiles private and only adding friends that they know. Make sure they don’t have any personal information posted—gender, address, schedule, photos, and even school name.

Read more guidelines at WiredSafety.org.

School Policies

Many schools and colleges have banned their students from joining these social networking sites.

“In addition to all the dangers involved and the imprudent things being posted by our students, the toll that MySpace was taking a toll on study time and classroom engagement,” said Judy Oberlander, Ojai Valley School (CA), about why her school chose to outlaw MySpace for their students.