Large Fla. School District Bans Popular Teen Web Site
POLK COUNTY, Fla., Feb, 16, 200
CBS) Myspace.com, one of the most popular teen Web sites, has been banned from schools in Florida’s eighth largest district.
Students in Polk County schools, which have almost 100,000 students, won’t be able to access the social networking site that’s on the radar of many teens.
Some use MySpace to post pictures and other information that’s available to anyone with a click of a mouse.
And that, explains Susan McGinnis, is exactly what has school officials and parents concerned.
Officials barred the site after parents complained it could lure sexual predators, and that some teens go too far by posting revealing photos and discussing sexual activities or drug use.
The move upset students such as a 17-year-old girl named Melanie who complained, “I think it is a really cool resource, and the Internet is really as safe as you can make it.”
But the assistant superintendent of Polk County Schools, Bruce Tonjes, says there’s “no way we can condone using our computers to put information out of a personal nature about our students.”
Polk officials say that they don’t plan to ban any other popular teen sites.
Most of the schools want myspace to be banned, because in their computer classes too many students start the period by logging on on myspace and staying on there until the teacher tells them to log off. But what the teachers might not know is that the students use this website to write to their friends. Students use this site as their “e-mail account”. I myself check myspace more than my AOL email account. Because on myspace i get to talk to my friends through and IM (instant messaging) , i get to know how they are through their profile status, and i get to see how they look like today, after not being able to see them for a longer time period, because on myspace you can upload pictures.
My opinion on what the school wants to do is, the students should know their ground rules, that they shouldn’t spend their class time for something that isn’t necessary in school, rather outside of school.
The school shouldn’t ban myspace because students should be able to do something incase they have free time and want to spend it in the computer lab or library in front of the computer.
The actual threat of sexual Preditors is very small. It can be made non-existant by taking the right steps in securing your account and making sure you dont post certain personal details.
Ok so now a days you can find sexual predators everywhere not just on the internet so I really don’t understand why they think banning Myspace and other websites like that is going to help stop sexual predators what so ever.
This is ludicrous. Of course sites such as Myspace can lure sexual predators and of course children are going to dicuss things like sex and drugs on sites like that. It’s a site for teenagers! Now Im not saying that all teenagers are going to talk about inapporpriate subjects online but you also can’t expect teens to go on myspace to talk about teddy bears and lollipops. This is the real world and it isnt a perfect place. Banning Myspace in the schools wont stop kids from talking about things that will rub thier parents the wrong way. As long as the things being discussed on Myspace don’t interfer with school, i really don’t see the problem.
One thing that was always told to me is never say personal information about myself . it is a risk or whatever, but its the same risk as for example, walking to school or something. I dont agree with the girl above saying “I think it is a really cool resource” because I dont learn anything from myspace, however I moved to Europe and had to leave all my friends in America. it is way too expensive to call, so i myspace them. Because Im not the only one in this situation, i think myspace should stay.