Getting in touch with your inner MySpace.com

Monroe - The social networking site MySpace.com makes it so now that people don’t even have to leave their homes to make friends. The popular Web site allows users to post personal information, pictures, blogs and invite and accept users to be their friends. In May, MySpace.com was the eighth most-visited Web site on the Internet, with 43.5 million hits, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a media-research company. In all, 92 million members worldwide call MySpace home. That includes nearly 7,000 postings when searching for users in a five-mile radius of Goshen, Monroe and Warwick. The site is not without controversy. A recent incident in Goshen where a 14-year-old girl was molested by a 21-year-old man whom she met on MySpace pushed the issue into the local spotlight. But in interviews, many users will tell you those incidents of sexual predators - while serious - are the exceptions. When browsing the site, there is a large amount of personal information. Most people post where they work, their school; some even list their dorm and room number. Some users post their AIM screen name, birth dates and in some cases their phone numbers. Even if users don’t post their name, it can be found by the comments friends write on their wall. On a page where a girl was listed as 25 she wrote: “As you can see from my picture I’m not as old as it says my age is.” Great and bizarre tool A 20-year-old male MySpace user from Monroe shared a personal story where he met up with a girl who told him that she was 17, and later found out that she was really 14. “MySpace is a great tool and a bizarre one,” he said. “People like to bastardize it by calling it a place for Internet prowlers to seek out kids, but it can just as easily be the place for lonely teens to do the same.” Another MySpace user from Greenwood Lake said that MySpace isn’t dangerous if you’re smart about who your friends are and the only people on your friends list should be people you know personally. A user from Warwick said she uses MySpace to find old friends, stay in touch with people, and meet new people. “There is such a beautiful underground movement of spirituality and political awareness on MySpace that is opening people’s eyes to the truth,” she said. “MySpace has personally helped me so much connect with like-minded individuals who share the same passion for music, life, and love as me and without a lot of them I feel I would not be where I am right now.” However, incidents across the country that have been surfacing involving MySpace and sexual predators have caused parents to become weary of the site. “I don’t think it’s a good place for anyone. I don’t think it’s very safe at all,” said Dianne Moore from Chester. Sylvia Bruzzese, another resident from Chester, recognizes the pro’s and con’s to the site. “I think it’s a good Web site, but not for children; only adults over 18 should use it, although I’d still be looking after my 18-year-old on it.” A place to grieve One user pointed out the link to the MySpace page of one of the young girls from Port Jervis who died June 2 in an accident on Interstate 84. Her page was filled with hundreds of comments from her friends and peers stating how much they love and miss her. One comment read: “I know you’re looking down on all of us in a place where you feel no pain.” Another asked: “Why did this happen to you of all people?” “I think her page shows just how powerful of a tool MySpace is,” the user who sent the link said. How radio use to be One user from Monroe said the whole reason why she joined MySpace was because a local band she liked was on it and it made it easier for her to listen to their music and look at their show dates. Many local musicians have taken advantage of the open forum MySpace offers to connect and communicate. “I use the events function to display my shows and invite people on our friends lists to the shows and to keep track of attendees to try and gauge what our turnout will be like,” said Gary Bloom of Chester, who has his own CD and is a part of the band called Beyond the Wall. “One of our fans recreated his MySpace page as a fan page, another created our fan club by herself, another bought CDs and brought 11 people down to one of our live shows with them.” While MySpace has allowed Bloom and his band to reach out to a larger fan base and get larger turnouts at shows, he also recognizes potential dangers of the site. “I see people I KNOW are under the age of 18 but list themselves as older,“ Bloom said. “Because MySpace has gotten a bad rap in the news, it can be dangerous for a band to send promotional e-mails to people who list themselves as legal age, but are not adults. The last thing I need is a father deciding that I’m trying to hit on his 17-year-old daughter when I e-mail her on MySpace if all I’m doing is inviting someone listed as 25 to one of our shows.” Even the Goshen Public Library has recognized the advantages of having MySpace and has created its own page. The page can be found at www.mySpace.com/goshenpubliclibrary and it includes a teen book review, teen blog and an on-line events calendar. The library’s site states that the profile is consistently monitored by the library’s network administrator and teen librarian and that MySpace does not need to be a site of “ill-repute.” It advocates that if more organizations with a positive message for teens were to join MySpace, the safer and the online environment will become. Cyber tattoo Aside from protecting oneself from sexual predators MySpace users also need to be weary of the content they post due to potential employers. Joe Callan, a MySpace user and the managing editor of Milford Magazine, said today’s employers are proficient at scanning the Internet as a form of background checks on applicants. “You may as well hand your employers a folder telling them who your friends are, what your hobbies are, and what you do day-to-day,” Callan said. “Damaging or compromising material posted to a personal Web site can ruin a prospective employee’s chances as easily as a felony conviction.”