MySpace Gaffe

I read with utter disbelief reports of calls to raise the age limit of popular social networking sites like myspace. Having worked closely with professional moderators whose role is to protect and serve the membership of electronic communities I can tell you that the only way to deal responsibly with such problems as bullying or indecency is to offer stronger support. Raising the age limit will solve nothing, as will closing the site (just as Microsoft's decision to close all of its chat rooms back in 2004). What will happen is a simple transfer of the problem from one internet space to the next. Hardly responsible and hardly effective. This is the problem with people who don't understand the networking phenomena. Here is another, recent reports identified that myspace postings saved a school from a horrific attack akin to the Columbine massacre. Other reports identified myspace as the source of identifying predators and criminals. MySpace appears to solve as many problems as it creates. Changing the age limit will have no effect what so ever but to distort the traffic on one site for another. Perhaps we just need to get smarter at educating and informing members of acceptable behavior. Next they'll be saving we should raise the age to 21 because seeing underage members posting images of themselves consuming alcohol encourages underage drinking.

Dr Hair is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the E Philip Saunders College of Business at RIT.

© 2006, Dr Neil Hair. All rights reserved.