Other articles by Erin White:

These sites tell you where charity dollars are going Tailors can work wonders on your clothes, but be realistic Peace signs are back with dual statements Popular pendants add pizazz What's your webutation? Thanks for everything, y'all The joy of jilting Help Johnjay, Rich grant Christmas Wishes Garsee, a former KOLD anchor, returns to TV Holiday gifts For him

Construction
West-Press
Printing Administrative & Professional
Tucson Urban League
CEO/President Health Care
CENTRAL ARIZONA COLLEGE
DIRECTOR OF HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Administrative & Professional
Jorgensen Brooks Group
Counselor Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION Sales and Marketing
Everready Glass
Sales Reps Mechanical
Komatsu Equipment Co
Resident Field Mechanic

Parents, take a deep breath the next time you catch a glimpse of the pimped-out picture and message page that has infused your 15-year-old's daily life. MySpace probably isn't as dangerous as you think, experts say.

"Kids will say, 'I only use MySpace to talk to my friends,' and I absolutely believe that is true," says Annie Fox, who gives workshops about MySpace to parents and writes an Internet advice column for parents and teens in the San Francisco area.

Even so, finding the balance between a teenager's privacy and a parent's need to monitor isn't easy.

About a year ago Tucsonan Curt Kiwak asked his son Cody Hill-Kiwak to show his MySpace page.

"I was like, 'Ooooookay,' " the 16-year-old Tucson High student says. "At that time there was nothing I didn't want him to see."

Hill-Kiwak says his dad asked him questions like, "So who do you talk to on here?" and "Do you talk to people you don't know?" The invasion of privacy didn't thrill the teenager, but even at 15, he says he saw where his dad was coming from.

"He was just trying to keep me safe," he says.

MySpace isn't without its dangers, Fox and other experts acknowledge. But they urge a sense of perspective. It isn't more dangerous than dating or driving or going to a party.

"I think there's been a lot of alarmist media out there," Fox says.

Fox says that while she understands parents' desire to electronically snoop on their children, we don't always give teenagers enough credit. Parents can't and don't monitor every second of their teenager's life outside the home. They set ground rules and then hope they've given enough instruction to allow for good decisions.

The same concept, she says, applies to Internet use.

"If your 17-year-old doesn't know what you expect from them, it's time you have that conversation," she says. "How do you know your kids are not doing drugs? How do you know your kid's not sexually active? By the time they're 14 or 15 years old, you should have transmitted all your values to them. At that point you've got to say, 'I can't breathe every breath for them. My kid is the good kid I think he is.' "

Hill-Kiwak says his dad "was just being paranoid," because he already knew the rules. Don't give out personal information. Don't say anything you wouldn't say in real life.

"It's just common sense. It was all stuff he'd told me before," Hill-Kiwak says.

The teenager's reaction shows that clear expectations had been set for him, Fox says.

"Ninety-nine point nine percent of kids are trustworthy and they're making good choices. And that doesn't happen by accident," Fox says.

University of Southern California sociologist Karen Sternheimer, who researches fears about children's media usage, says studies show that most teens who engage in risky behavior online do so in real life, too. The social networking site isn't often causing good kids to act out. Instead, it's one more tool for misguided teens.

But parents' impulse to oversee every virtual move reflects a larger and more troubling trend, she says.

"There is a bigger danger in creating a generation of kids who are really not encouraged to have the confidence that they can take care of themselves," the sociologist says.

Today, parents watch 16- and 17-year-olds to make sure they finish homework. Two generations ago, 16-year-olds enlisted in the military and started families, she points out. MySpace and other social networking sites offer teens a way to test their responsibility, she says.

"We fail to teach kids things like skepticism about other people's claims, which is a great lesson for a kid with a page on MySpace. It's a great lesson in self-marketing, too," she says. Parents can go to ridiculous lengths, she says, citing a program that scans e-mails so parents can catch their teenagers cursing.

The conversations teens have on instant messaging programs and sites like MySpace aren't new. But unlike their parents, who took the family phone into the closet to send gossip into the ether with friends, today's teens leave a tempting, written record of their communication.

Kiwak admits he looks to see who's sending his son e-mails, but he says he doesn't go so far as to read them. Kiwak says he tries to keep a dialogue open. His son doesn't always give him answers he loves, but he gets answers that assure him that his son won't be like the teenager who convinced her parents she was visiting a friend in Canada so she could fly to the Middle East to meet a man she'd met on MySpace.

"I thank God my son's not doing that. At least I have to trust that he's not doing that," Kiwak says. "If we're too involved with their life, they're not making decisions."

But, he adds, he's keeping close enough track to be sure that his son wouldn't make it to another country without his knowledge.

Both Fox and Sternheimer admit that parents would likely feel uncomfortable with some of what they found if they delved deep into a MySpace page or an e-mail account.

"But it might not be that their teenagers are doing anything wrong. It might just be kind of upsetting for parents to see, hey my kid is sexually attractive," Sternheimer says. "Parents really need to do a little self-reflection and ask, 'Is this my issue or am I really being a parent in trying to regulate this?' "

But just because parents shouldn't rifle through every communication their teenagers make doesn't mean they shouldn't do their homework about online communication, Fox says.

Going online and checking out MySpace on a general level is a great idea.

"If a person had a little bit of information, they could get a sense of what MySpace looks like," Fox says.

Even giving the teen a heads up and then checking their profile is reasonable, Sternheimer says.

And if a parent is seriously concerned about a teen's behavior on MySpace, there's no law against moving the computer to a family room or forcing the teen to share a computer like Kiwak and his son.

When the two share a computer, Kiwak can easily keep track of his son's online comings and goings. But, Kiwak says, "no one can make another person not do something. I'm hoping what I'm doing with my son is helping so that he's going to be able to live with what he does because I set up a good base for him."