MySpace and your kids

 

What do you think about MySpace? What do you know about it?

 

The recent deaths of two teenage girls in an apparent suicide pact in Victoria has raised fears of copycat self-harm behaviours, influenced by youth subcultures and their online activities on sites such as MySpace.

 

George Patton, Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital professor of adolescent health was reported  in Melbourne’s The Age as saying that the internet intensifies the risk of suicide contagion.

 

It appears that the two 16 year old girls found dead in bushland near Melbourne yesterday posted “RIP Jodie and Steph” on their MyPace page the day before they disappeared.

 

So concerned about the posting of suicide notes on MySpace – known as “MySpace suicide” – that the US based organisation Lifeline has created its own MySpace page to combat this growing phenomenon.

 

The Internet is a new medium for marginalised young people to hang out in and connect with each other. There is no shortage of content online about self-harm but the medium itself does not cause self-harm.

 

Youth sub-cultures thrive online and Emo (short for emotional), perhaps the most perverse and potentially dangerous sub-culture has a strong presence on MySpace.

 

No single factor leads to self-harm and suicide, so blaming sub-culture influence and the Internet is simplistic. It is usually young people who sit outside the protective walls of strong family, positive peers and connectedness at school who are most at risk of self-harm and suicide.

 

The cyberworld is perhaps for this generation of young people (Gen Y) what illegal drugs were for young people of a past generation. Like drugs cyberspace is addictive and offers a hierarchy for new users to work through.

 

Many young people’s cyber experience starts with relatively harmless MSN and moves onto to setting up their own website where they can upload photos and movies of all their offline activities.

 

Cyberspace is the place to be for Generation Y. Sites like MySpace are happening quickly and are like big online parties with young people making their private lives very public indeed. They are the shopping centres of the 21^st Century where young people ‘hang out’ and meet each other away from the gaze of adults.

 

How concerned should adults be about young people’s new use of cyber space?

 

I am not sure but this movement has happened so rapidly that it has caught many parents and teachers completely unaware. In light of recent events I think it is time to think about the increasing exposure that young people have to the very adult-free cyber world at an age when many are vulnerable and impressionable – quite a volatile combination.

 

I’ll ask the question again. What do you think about MySpace? What do you know about it? Check it out. Know what the kids are talking about. And get an idea of what your kids are doing online. Don’t let them disappear into the very unreal world of cyberspace, which is a place where it is easier to make friends than it is in real life.

 

And that is not healthy, regardless of a young person’s state of mind.

www.parentingideas.com.au 

 

Michael Grose    CSP

 

Author of the brilliant NEW at-home parenting program -"Boys - Raising boys from toddlerhood to manhood." www.parentingideas.com.au