Teens know online safety

Over half of all teens have a presence on MySpace or similar site. As I have discussed before these sites are often demonized unjustly. Now there is a study out from the Pew Foundation backing me up:

Teens who use social networking sites seem to be very aware of the security concerns involved as well as the measures available to them to prevent unintended usage. Only 1% of those teens surveyed were unsure whether their current profile was listed publicly or privately, which indicates that teens are making decisions about who can and cannot see their profiles.

The message in the media seemed to be one of "Oh no, predators will hunt down our children!" But the work put in here by the Pew study group indicates that teens are pretty savvy about their net usage, and perhaps savvier than the media or their parents have given them credit for.

However I guess you have to wonder about Xbox Live:

What I think is creepy is some of the people that my kids have played XBox Live with. They are talking to them online with a microphone and I can hear what they are saying. Some of them are just bizarre characters although most of them are just regular gamers.

Got to stay aware, some of it is bad, but some of it just the new Rock and Roll.