Should I look at my child's MySpace page?

Should you spy?
On the one hand, you are the adult, the parent, the protector who is responsible for the adolescents in your care; on the other hand, taking a peek without permission and then calling the contents into question may seriously damage the trust that you've been building with your child -- trust you must have in order to successfully communicate.

Under most circumstances I don't recommend snooping. Nothing builds responsibility and autonomy in your child more than the knowledge that he or she is being trusted to figure things out independently, and that it is OK if he or she makes a mistake or two. In regard to MySpace, much of what I've witnessed from my own students is pretty innocent behaviour, negotiating the wobbly steps on the path of adolescence. For many kids, MySpace and other online social networks are not dirty little secrets kept hidden under the mattress, so there should be no reason to snoop. Most teen experts agree that spying on or performing surveillance on your child is not a wise approach.

The exception is if you suspect your child is involved in dangerous behaviours or relationships and you are having difficulty asserting parental control. Of course, in this instance, your child's involvement on MySpace is a secondary concern. If you suspect your child is involved in an abusive relationship, self-mutilation, drugs, or pornography, and you are getting nowhere talking with them, please by all means search your teen's room, backpack, cell phone records, and Internet profiles in an effort to help them. And then seek professional help or counseling for your child. But barring this extreme, you may feel torn about how to approach the issue of meeting your cyber-child.

Enlist your child's help
I believe you absolutely must enlist your child to escort you on a tour of their page. Teenagers feel that they are in control, and soliciting their assistance will feed that desire. Also, because MySpace is so personal and so teen-centreed, proceeding without their guidance would only provoke indignance and irritation from your child. Still, asking your child to escort you through his profile may not be well-received. If you're worried, just remember what Bette Davis once said: "If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent." But the reality is that most kids won't feel so averse to showing you their page; most teens I've spoken to are quite proud of their page and eager to show it off. Your child may surprise you.

After conducting an impressive study about the role MySpace plays in teens' lives, in which we interviewed over 1,200 MySpace teens and their parents, psychologist Larry D. Rosen, PhD, declared, "You absolutely need to ask your child to show you his/her MySpace page." After extensive interviews with L.A. parents, he reports that "38 percent said they had never looked at their child's profile (nor had they talked to their child about their MySpace usage), another 14 percent said they had almost never checked it, and 16 percent stated they only glanced at it every few months." In fact, he found that only one-third of the parents actually checked their teen's MySpace page on a regular basis, and more than 40 percent of parents had never seen the photographs their teen posted on MySpace. Interestingly, he adds that "70 percent of the adolescents said they would feel comfortable having their parents look at their MySpace page." Fifteen-year-old Angelo told me, "I would love to show my parents my page, especially since I tricked it out last week; they'd be pretty proud of it."

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Excerpted from Generation MySpace: Helping Your Teen Survive Online Adolescence: How Social Networking is Changing Everything About Friendship, Gossip, Sex, Drugs, and Our Kids' Values by Candice M. Kelsey. Copyright 2007 by Candice M. Kelsey. Excerpted by permission of Marlowe and Company, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.