Myspace Unraveled: A Parent's Guide to Teen Social Networking from the Directors of BlogSafety.com

By Anne Collier, Larry Magid, Lawrence J. Magid

Provides information for parents on how to set up a MySpace account and discusses how to encourage teens to safely navigate this online social network. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 032148018X
• ISBN13: 9780321480187
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Peachpit Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.3" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Security Tips for parents to watch

Myspace has become a very popular network for high school kids to chat or communicate with their friends. Myspace is the extension of school time socialization into the home. Kids can share pictures, talk about topics, and answer questions. Parental guidance for myspace is a must. One story that stands out in my mind, is two girls that claim they had no personal information on their myspace account. However, when they were asked about their personal information, they told the interviewer, there was no personal information. An officer in the next room, revealed their names, home address, schools, and friends. The two girls had left a massive trail of bread crumbs for the officer to pickup and deduct. Myspace claims there site is safe, clean of porn, and trends towards predators falling lower in projection. Myspace is becoming an attraction for music, entertainment, and game advertisement and interaction with the kids. Sometimes the kids don't realize what words mean. They use word phrases too because another friends says it would sound cool. One mother told me, she called her relative and said, "do you know what your daughter has posted on myspace?" The lady view the information and was shocked. Address, crude phrases, and personal information was plastered all over the page. Needless to say, the woman immediately had the girl remove the content. Myspace claims it can not monitor all the content on their site. However, if you complain too the myspace monitors, they will remove inappropriate accounts. Removing your childs account can be traumatic because of their time investment into the network. What an information machine, myspace has created. Highschools around the country are using myspace. Libraries are forced to open myspace to internet users because of the high requests for access. Myspace opens up bulletin messages, events, daily journal blogs, chats, picture and music sharing, games, and plugins.

Well balanced, excellent guide

This stands out as the best of the MySpace books I've read. It is logically organized and well presented, with color screenshots. The authors present a balanced approach to MySpace, without an alarmist attitude, but with very insightful observations and helpful suggestions, backed by cited research. Their approach is based in the reality of the Web and social networking, addressing the issues one needs to know while guiding the reader through setting up a MySpace account and using MySpace resources. Sprinkled throughout the book are "Key Parenting Points" which speak directly to parental concerns about MySpace features. Their philosophy on dealing with those parental concerns can be summed up by their statement (on page 12), "There is no substitute for engaged parenting...But that engagement...is less about control than it is about communication." Hence the book is about informing for constructive parenting rather than controlling a teen's access to MySpace. The writing style is informal and easy. The authors speak as parents and professionals who are actively involved with teens, parents, and the Web. Their experience shows. [...].

Social Networking 101 for Parents

Larry Magid and Anne Collier are industry experts on child safety online, and their collaboration here is outstanding. "MySpace Unraveled" explains the social networking phenomenon and the related safety issues in an easy to follow and practical way that is a must read for any parent who has children in today's day and age.

A parent's handbook

Larry Magid's book is the first excellent source for parents to figure out what their kids are doing on MySpace. It teaches parents how to get their own MySpace account, not to spy on their children, but to see what this world is all about. It has lots of good advice for parents although I wish the author would have spent less time on telling parents how to pimp their MySpace page and more on how to talk to their children about safety and particularly about online friendships. All in all, though, a good, valuable read.