Campus administrators have heard (and told) countless horror stories about the stuff students post to MySpace and Facebook — salacious talk, photos of hazing incidents, and personal addresses and cellphone numbers, often left out in the open for nearly any Web surfer to see.
But there is reason to believe that the next generation of collegiate social networkers might be more circumspect about what they choose to share with the Web at large, according to a survey released today by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The study, "Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview," found that two-thirds of junior-high and high-school students with MySpace profiles restricted their photos and personal information to people they deemed friends.
Teenagers, it seems, are paying attention to the hand-wringing about identity theft and online predators. But in fact, some of the threats allegedly posed by MySpace and its ilk may be a bit overhyped, says Sameer Hinduja, an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida Atlantic University.
Mr. Hinduja's own study, "Personal Information of Adolescents on the Internet: A Quantitative Content Analysis of MySpace," scanned 1,500 adolescents' MySpace pages for drug references, explicit language, and photos of scantily clad teenagers. The professor found that MySpace wasn't nearly as racy — nor as full of contact information and personal ephemera — as some critics have claimed. "Teens are using common sense," he told the Orlando Sentinel. –Brock Read
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