Life Skills

Just mention the word MySpace and many parents of teens feel uncomfortable, apprehensive, or just downright scared. After all, they read daily reports of sexual predators roaming MySpace, rampant cyberbullying, and children who have been abducted (and even murdered) by someone they met on MySpace. 

 

Dr. Larry D. Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills recently published an article on teen MySpace use and parental involvement. The article is called, "The Impact of Parental Attachment Style, Limit Setting and Monitoring on Teen MySpace Behavior." 

 

In this study, three important questions were studied: (1) How prevalent are Internet and MySpace dangers? (2) How aware are parents about what their children and adolescents are doing on MySpace, and (3) What role does parenting play in the online experiences of children?

In this study 1,091 pre-teens and teens that are on MySpace as well as one of their parents were interviewed. The study was designed by inviting a variety of parent-teen pairs to go to an online, anonymous survey website. First the parent, in the privacy of his or her home, answered a series of questions about (1) personal Internet and MySpace experience; (2) their beliefs about what their children are doing online; (3) their understanding of the threats of sexual predators, cyberbullies, pornography, Internet addiction and other highly publicized MySpace fears; (4) their parenting style; and (5) how they monitored and limited their child’s use of MySpace and other technologies. The fact that they were answering these questions without providing any identifying information led to extremely honest, and often blunt answers and admissions.

Next, the pre-teen or teen (we studied children from 11-years-old to 18-years-old), in the privacy of their home, answered the same questions as their parents plus additional assessments of their psychological health. Actually, in our other studies, we asked teens even more questions about psychological health including depression, self-esteem, and Internet addiction, the results of which I will mention briefly below.

This study is the first of its kind to anonymously interview parents and teens and allow them to speak their minds without worrying about anyone knowing their “business.” We continue to follow this model for research using anonymous websites to collect data on important, sensitive social issues.