Social networking giant MySpace is teaming up with Seventeen magazine, the National School Board Association (NSBA), and the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) to publish and distribute materials concerning Internet safety.
These guides will help inform parents, teachers, and teenagers attending grades 7 through 12 to understand the key issues concerning online safety, including tips and explanations regarding security on MySpace. Details about the site’s specific safety features will also be included in the guides.
“We’re committed to doing everything we can to improve Internet safety,” said Hemanshu Nigam, Chief Security Officer at MySpace. “While technology plays a critical role in tackling the challenges of Internet safety, any measures must be part of a comprehensive solution, and education is an essential component.”
“What MySpace has done brilliantly is they have introduced us to a new technology that’s really cool, but what we need to do now as a society is to make some rules,” said Atoosa Rubenstein, Editor-in-Chief at Seventeen magazine.
She added that “Parents and teachers already keep an eye on a teen’s friends at school or night time plans, but they need to keep the same tabs on their digital lives. We all need to do our part to keep teens safe.”
Rubenstein plans on posting the safety information that is eventually published on her MySpace profile.
Many of the guidelines that will be presented are things that teens already know, like keeping phone numbers, addresses, and school names private, and not lying about their age on their profiles. Nigam says that although these things might already be common knowledge, teens “just need to be educated that in the online world, the same rules apply.”
Tips will include the following: Be Careful, Be Skeptical, Be Picky, Be a Good Online Citizen, and Be Real.
The guides will be distributed beginning in October, which is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Parents will be able to download the pamphlets off of MySpace.com’s “Tips for Parents” section, while about 55,000 public schools will receive teachers’ guides by way of the NSBA. Independent schools around the nation will receive the guides through the NAIS.
Sources:
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=
18763&hed=MySpace+to+Publish+Online+Safety+Tips
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/
searchinsider/wpn-49-20060925MySpace
SeventeenJoinUpForTeenSafety.html
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