Experts say the bottom line is that parents should get more involved in the online lives of their children.
“I tell parents that they should absolutely create their own MySpace and Facebook page,” Christakis said. The study inspired him to create his own Facebook account, and his 10-year-old already wants to know about his “friends,” he said.
In some cases, parents should even have their children’s passwords for these social networking sites, especially when the children are around age 13 or 14, said Vivian Friedman, child-adolescent psychologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Friedman was not involved with the study, but she is well aware of the problem. One of Friedman’s patients, the daughter of a preacher, posted nude photographs of herself online, a move that cost her father his job, Friedman said.
But she said 54 percent as a figure for profiles with risky behaviors seems too high, given that most of what happens on social networking sites is “chit-chat.”
“I have parents that catch their kids bragging about something on MySpace, and when you actually confront them, the kid says ‘I really wasn’t doing it,’ and they can prove they were not at the party where they were supposed to have been drinking,” she said.
Beyond keeping a watchful eye on risky interests and pictures, parents should also use social networking sites such as MySpace — which had about 120 million users as of this summer — as an opportunity to learn about their childrens’ favorite movies and hobbies, as well as their top friends, she said.
“You so often hear parents say ‘I don’t even know my kid anymore.’ Here’s a very easy tool to get to know your kid again,” she said.
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