Under mounting pressure from law enforcement and parents, MySpace agreed Monday to take steps to protect youngsters from online sexual predators and bullies, including searching for ways to better verify users’ ages.
The hugely popular online hangout will create a task force of industry professionals to improve the safety of users, and other social-networking sites will be invited to participate. “We must keep telling children that they’re not just typing into a computer. They’re sharing themselves with the world,” said North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper.
The deal comes as sites such as MySpace and Facebook have grown exponentially in recent years, with teenagers making up a large part of their membership. This has created a new potential venue for sexual predators who lie about their age to lure young victims and for cyber bullies who send threatening and anonymous messages.
The only state not joining the agreement was Texas, where the attorney general said he cannot support the effort unless MySpace takes action to verify users’ ages.
“We do not believe that MySpace.com — or any other social-networking site — can adequately protect minors” without an age-verification system, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said. “We are concerned that our signing the joint statement would be misperceived as an endorsement of the inadequate safety measures.”
Monday’s announcement was short on specifics about how improvements would be carried out. Skeptics doubt MySpace and similar sites can eliminate online predation because age-verification technology is difficult to implement and predators are good at circumventing restrictions.
Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org, a children’s Internet safety group, said the agreement was a good first step but could have unforeseen consequences.
“There’s no system that will work for age verification without putting kids at risk,” she said. “Age verification requires that you have a database of…