A Parents -Eye View

A Parents'-Eye View

MySpace profiles can be pretty jarring to parents when they check out the site for the first time.

The profiles may have a disheveled look, in the way that kids and their rooms sometimes look to adults. Then there are the photos, some of which seem over the top to parents thinking about who else is viewing them. You may have seen this effect in local TV news stories, in what sometimes seems like a ratings grab: the shocked looks on parents' faces when a reporter takes them to a page of search results displaying profiles of teens from the high school their children attend.

What parents are seeing, in effect, is what adolescents have been doing and saying for eons in more private spaces like the local malt shop, college keg parties, the mall, or behind the bleachers at a football game on a Friday night.

What's very different here is that all the "Ps"peers, parents, predators, police, and policymakersare thrown into the same space, which makes for a volatile potion! It's definitely shaking up adults.

What we need to keep in mind is that these kinds of teen self-expression have been going on for generations and that the content is not always "real." It's an act in a lot of cases. Remember? We experimented with who we were when we were at parties too. We're not saying everybody on MySpace is acting out, showing off, or experimenting with personas. Not even all the teenagers are, of course.