Betamom read an article last week in the L.A. Times about myspace. As the mother of an almost 13 year old immersed in westla culture, you have to comment. The myspace article in the LA times was a fake, sanitized version of what the mystakes and the mybattleground is really like. Any mom who actually has a child in middle school right now knows that. And thus, we thank the blogging gods -- to create a space where people could actually say the things that they can't print in the LA Times.
Here are a few of the things that come to mind:
If your child is a minimum of eleven years old and lives in westla, and has access to the internet, or has ever been allowed to go on a playdate without you, then he or she is very likely to have a myspace account. If not, then he or she -- WITHOUT A DOUBT - has several friends and at least one "best friend" with myspace accounts. Sixth graders are on myspace already. By seventh grade, more than half of your child's class has a myspace site. Many have had them taken away and have new ones. Many have more than one account. Many change their name every week, so their parents can't track them. Even the ones who have been busted are back, sometimes with "My mom took myspace away" as a user name. Most likely, these are a few of their site names: Promiscual Sex. Sexxxx. Your Weenis is Small. Sexi. Chillidoggin. Orgy. Actually, those are all already taken -- by seventh graders at the most elite private schools in town.
If you go online, you will learn that school "Suxx Ass." That the name "Reed rhymes with weed." And that "there's nothing wrong with a good whore every once in a while." Seventh graders are full of wisdom in that way. You will also see thirteen year olds photographing mostly their butts, hair, and boobs. Giving away personal information about where they live (Pacific Palisades) where they go (rockin the Nod and buying sexi bras at Victoria Secret) and who they hate (their parents, who now don't let them rock the nod but that's okay because they can still get dropped off at Century City and get high at that place they all get high that moms haven't figured out yet.) They'll also totally dish on other seventh graders in a weird way that lets you know they don't really understand that anyone in the world could be reading what they are writing. Including the person they are ragging on. Including their moms. Including the school administration worried about "the myspace issue," the police worried about the child predators issue, and, let's not forget, the child predators themselves.
There is literally no exception to the rule. One account holder shares a gene pool with the founder of modern physics. One is the daughter of a respected local judge -- who probably had no clue when the kid's survey asked "Will you f___ me...do oral/anal on me" on her site. The children of the CEO of myspace attend a school where they would actually be suspended for even having a myspace account, since it is an elementary school and there are thus no actual fourteen-year-olds (the minimum age for myspace) attending. None of us are immune. Alphas and Betas alike.
It's out there, and you probably can't stop it, unless you are planning on home-schooling, cryogenic freezing, and/or hermetically sealing your child into a yard-waste size Ziploc baggie. All of those options sound pretty good to me, yet time consuming, somewhat impractical, and expensive. The larger issue becomes, where is this generation headed? What is the fallout from developing your identity along with your aggressive, promiscuous, semi-autobiographical / semi-fictional online personalities? If the world is made out of words - in some way or another - what are they making, and where is it all going?
And should we give up trying to stop them? Or to stop even our own child? The woman who wrote the online safety page for myspace compares it to "premarital sex" and says abstinence just won't work. But we are talking about eleven, twelve, thirteen year olds. And they can't get to the mall if we don't drive them there. They can't get online if they don't have a computer in their room. And everything they are doing is in the public domain, if you know where to look.
And trust me, even a beta mom will be able to find out what is going on in her kid's life if she just bothers to go online and find out.
Who needs that much space, anyways?
My Space (the enemy)
Google - to find your kid, search for kidsname+school+myspace...
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