Can’t be a 1906 MySpace user

16th October 2006

posted in isafety, socialnetworking |

Well this is interesting, apparently the MySpace admins want to force people to list their correct age (at least birthyear) in their MySpace profiles.

Problem is, I DON’T WANT to list my correct birth year, not because I am under 18, but because I don’t want to receive “friend requests” from people targeting males in my age range.

I changed my listed age, but changed the year to 1935. Hopefully they’ll buy that and not make me change it again. I think the problem here is that the MySpace folks want to develop demographically accurate databases of user information they can use commercially and sell. MySpace is an advertising-driven environment, and that is one of the biggest problems with it overall in addition to the poor decisions members often make about what personal info to post and share.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 11:50 pm and is filed under isafety, socialnetworking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On October 17th, 2006, C Nelson said:

Was that a screen shot?? Note the grammar in the request: “Please set you age correctly”
Makes me wonder about those that are checking up on this.

2 On October 17th, 2006, Wesley Fryer said:

Yes, that was a screenshot of the message in MySpace.

Good catch on the grammar. I suppose this could be from a user masquerading as a MySpace admin, I don’t know. In either case they should know about the use of possessive pronouns like “your!”

3 On October 17th, 2006, Jennifer W said:

Grins — so a bit sensitive on our age Don’t worry, once you pass 45 (sadly I know this to be true) it doesn’t matter anymore. Plus, I still feel in my early 30s — so no biggie.

But all kidding aside — there is NO way that you can tell me that this is the way that MySpace will protect kids. Look how easy it was for you to fake a year — think how easy it will be for the kids under 18???

I believe that you are right — and it truly made me think that that is what our kids need to know as well — that in the world of the internet (not the world of the classroom) they are just a statistic, a tracking method, and a potential consumer — and because of that, they are looked at as only a potention $ and not a human being or someone that could get hurt, stalked, or more.

Something new for me to dwell on.

Jen