With the popularity of social networking on the rise, sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook are playing silly games with protecting children from sex offenders, pornography, cyber bulling and a growing list of online threats.

Many sites offer parents silly rules to help people deal with the problem. Parents are uncomfortable with suggestions like ‘participate more in your kid’s life’, ‘become more tech savvy’ or ‘get kids to be honest, communicate with them’! So parents pass the responsibility on to the owners of the MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook sites. The site owners propose a set of other silly cyber rules like “we will delete your profile if you lie about your age!” Realizing the potential backlash from laxity and moreso to protect themselves, the site owners have turned to governments. Governments turn to task forces who propose measures that lead to enactment of silly laws like the one recently implemented in the United States.

The legislation is designed to protect the corporations more than the kids! It may help somewhat, but it is absurd to believe that laws alone will protect kids online.

The problem lies with lying. It is easy to lie about who you are, your age and any of the other information people post online. Lying is not restricted to young people. Kids may lie about their age to get into MySapce. Adult sex offenders, cyber bullies and other grownups also lie. The core of the problem is the high costs of resources, time and money for verification.

Social networking is all about getting together with others online to do whatever interests the group. We have seen many creative ideas come from the young people. Blogging, MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook all started with small ideas from younger people.

Why not ask them how to deal with the problem of how to better protect the younger ones from the dangers that social networking poses?

Let’s protect kids first. The corporations can take care of themselves!