May 7th, 2007
Good intentions aside, lawmakers are stymied by kids who lie about their ages
The Web is a lawless country. Try as politicians might, they just can't put regulations that really work to keep pedophiles and other n'er-do-wells from contacting minors on MySpace - because they they haven't found a way to keep minors from lying about their ages. The New York Times reports that after dozens of cases where adults met with minors they contacted on MySpace, states are crafting legislation that proposes to protect minors by requiring sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to verify the age of every user and require parental permission for those under 18.
Will it work? Not according to Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace, who warned that new restrictions could create a false sense of safety.
"Everyone looking at this has good intentions at their core, but there are some solutions that sound like they are the easy silver bullet and there is just no such thing. You'll see teens who are going to get around it and probably end up in a place where it is more difficult to protect them."
The new legislation may do little but assuage parents and get them off politicians' backs. MySpace and Facebook already have age restrictions on their sites, and that hasn't stopped minors who want to create a profile from doing so. Nevertheless, the pressure is on for social networking sites to keep minors from logging on.
"This is a basic issue of safety," says Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general who started a national campaign to raise the registration age to 16 from 14. "These kinds of Web sites have created this complete delusion that this is a private world that an outsider does not get into, but it is a total misnomer. Anyone can get in."
