One thing about social networking sites is the “social” nature of them. People of all ages can come together at a common site and network.
Myspace.com is being sued for 30 million dollars because a 14 year old female member of the website was sexually assaulted by a member after lying about being a senior in high school that played football. In reality it was 19 year old Pete Solis.
Very few details were given on what type of sexual assault occurred.
The suit alleges that MySpace has “absolutely no meaningful protections or security measures to protect underage users.” and was filed by the girl and her mother.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and say that I think this lawsuit shouldn’t go to court and that Myspace should countersue this girl’s mother for being negligent of her own daughter’s actions on the internet. She should have been a responsible enough parent to supervise or have parental controls on the computer to assure this didn’t happen.
Most kids already know not to give their phone numbers to strangers. Obviously “mom” forget to teach her that simple safety rule, too.
What is your opinion on this? Do you think this is grounds for a lawsuit against Myspace?
Unfortunatly you cant monitor everything your kids do unless you bug their system, which unfortunately not many people are doing as it will be a good way to see everything which is happeneing.
Yes kids know not to give their numbers out etc… but some people feel that if its their cell phone its nothing to do with their parents and what harm can it do, which really is a bad attitude to things you can see that peoples myspace profiles have actually got peoples phone numbers shown on it and they can be very young.
Overall i think myspace should start filtering things to stop this happening its not the parents folt at the age of 14 not alot of people know whats going on so you really cant blame the parents as much.
Lets not forget that Myspace does nothing to verify the true age of a user. You just check a box that says your at least 14. They have no security measures against people making up online profiles for someone elas. My daughters friend had this happen to her over the summer. A couple of girls decided to make a myspace for another girl, posted her picture, and alot of very nasty things about the girl and alot of other people. This girls reputation was so badly damaged that she almost had to switch schools. This girls parents had a very hard time getting Myspace to take the listing down. The authorities would not do a thing about it because it is a cyber crime. So be careful about feeling sorry for Myspace and blaming parents for not watching their child every minute of the day. Myspace is making a lot of money for what they provide. Theres no reason they can’t do a better job verifying age and email address being used. And they certainly could be more cooperative with the parents trying to correct these types of situatations. Do you know, you can’t even find a phone number to call these guys. I’ve emailed them 3 times with no responds. Maybe the only way to get them to pay attention is to sue them.
Sexual assualt in the state of Texas (and many others) means that Pete Solis and this girl had consensual sex. Anything more than that and the charge would be aggragated sexual assualt. This girl is hardly unique for her age to be involved in sexual intercourse – probably close to 50% of her peers are. Her parents claim she is traumatized? How in the world would consentual sex cause that? Who is kidding who?
How would her reputation be ruined at school? Excuse me, teenagers today place notches in their belts for all their sexual scores, the females are worse about it than the males. They are no more sexually active than preceding generations but they are much more open and honest about it all. There is not the moral hysterical shame associated with sex for them. High schools have nurseries now to take care of all the teenage babies. Come on, give me a break. The only shame this girl would have experienced resulted from her parents committing the most ordinant sin of all by taking her sexual affair to the national press, and filing charges against the boy – these are teenage traumatic nightmares.
To be honest, what does the boy being 18 or 19, or lying to her about being on the football team have to do with her agreeing (and most likely wanting) to have sex with him? He says she contacted him first on myspace – probably did. They exchanged names, phone numbers, etc just as males and females do all the time – normal stuff. She lied about her age because she wanted to catch an older boyfriend – guy with a car and some money? She agrees to meet him for what reason? Because she was naive? Come on. Doesn’t anyone grasp the lack of sense and honesty in her parents suit all the way around?