She painted her bedroom walls black and then covered them with her own artwork — paintings, sketches, landscapes and original renderings of her favorite bands. Joann Diaz, 16, from New Port Richey, Fla., is what you might call an “art kid.” When she is not in school, she is either hammering away at the drum set in her room or using her customized PC to chat with friends about the release of the new Avenge Sevenfold album.
Like many teens, Diaz uses MySpace.com to connect with fellow music-lovers and performers. Whether she’s searching for classmates to attend the Warped Tour with her in the summer, or browsing the local band scene, she knows that among her 214 friends, someone will be around to chat.
Diaz also represents a growing number of teenagers experiencing the assorted uses and misuses of social-networking websites such as Myspace.com and Facebook.com.
“I like meeting people who are just like me, and I mainly use it to talk to my friends from school or get updates from bands I like,” she said.
However, with fewer restrictions than Facebook.com — the other über-publicized social networking site — there is no control over who talks to who. And unfortunately, 16 year-old girls are prime targets for adult male sexual predators.
Diaz, despite her intentions of only connecting with people who have similar musical interests, is among the ranks of users unwillingly approached by older men.
“Some guy added me, and he had like half-naked models on his background and stuff,” she said. “He was significantly older than me. I deleted him because it was weird.”
But before deleting him, she did what any curious person would do, she scoped out the stranger to see if he was somebody she knew.
“I just thought it was odd that he added me because he was like 30 and from around here. The half-naked pictures kind of weirded me out,” she said “I don’t know why he was looking at my profile to begin with.”
Luckily, Diaz knew how to spot a creep.
“I’d be stupid and keep talking to them because I was bored. I’d be like ‘Oh some guy’s talking to me,’ and pretend to go along with the stuff they said,” she said. “They’d ask what I was wearing and I’d make up stuff.”
With the inception of webcams, meeting others online has became more personal, and sometimes inappropriately sexual, according to Diaz.
However, Diaz said she recognizes the difference between chat-room crackpots and the men who harass girls on MySpace.com.
“On MySpace, they don’t just come up to anyone. If someone wants something sexual from you off MySpace it’s either because you’re sending the wrong message or you’re asking for it,” she said. “[Girls] have provocative pictures and sometimes they say they are looking for someone.”
She said she continues to use the site because she knows how to avoid the “bad people,” and she counts the site as a valuable resource for expressing herself and for meeting other people.
Although MySpace.com users can opt to make their pages private to anyone who is not confirmed as a friend — much like Facebook.com — Diaz said it defeats the purpose of self-expression.
“I feel safe even though sometimes I think people could be looking at my pictures in a disgusting way,” she said. “I want people to see what I’m about by looking at my page and if it’s private all they get from it is one picture.”
Diaz said she is not often approached by predators on Myspace.com. She usually gets friend requests from kids at school, friends from old schools and different bands.
Connecting with fans is also a huge motivation for the bands that advertise or just post personal pages on MySpace.com.
NETWORKING IN THE
MYSPACE COMMUNITY
Lucas Carpenter, an independent artist and senior at Berklee College of Music, said he believes boredom produces web-addicted teens who look to Myspace.com for new musical experiences.
“Everybody used to say that to build a fanbase, you need to go to a big city where there are a whole lot of people,” he said. “With MySpace.com, you can find kids and let them know when you’ll be in their area.”
Carpenter said MySpace.com is a very helpful tool for both the band and the fans alike. It allows the band to find listeners without spending a lot of money on tours and promotion, while allowing teens the option of choosing their own kind of music.
“The industry now is looking at grassroots artists, and that’s who MySpace helps” he said. “Gone are the days of building up an artist from nothing. It’s about finding your fanbase first.”
“When we’re on a level playing field, it all boils down making good music,” he added. “Making good music and being involved in building a community.”
Brian Bergeron, a junior at Northeastern University and another independent artist advertising on MySpace.com, said the site provides many social-networking benefits.
“The bands are trying to keep up stride-for-stride and the tools one can use on it are great,” he said. “I’ve learned how to include links to other websites, host banners that people can paste onto their sites and set-up a button to sell my CD directly off of my profile.”
Bergeron said Myspace.com also offers features that Facebook.com does not.
“[With Facebook.com] I can’t check out someone at BU unless they’re my friend and there aren’t search parameters,” he said. “How am I supposed to know what music they like?”
However, Bergeron contends that neither site completely offers all the tools needed for effective netoworking.
“You should be able to group friends,” he said. “Other than your ‘top eight’ friends, which you have control of, they are put in order by when they signed up for MySpace. I’d like to be able to set up my friends by region or by school or by something,” he said.
EXPANDING THE FRIEND
SITE CRAZE
College of Communication senior Devin Poehlman said he does not understand why so many people join these websites.
“I don’t know why anyone really joins these sites, but I have some theories of why they grow so rapidly,” he said.
“It’s something I call ‘pressure of the commons,'” said Poehlman, who is planning on launching a social-networking site of his own. “It’s this idea that the service you are using will be better for your own use if you get everyone you know involved. You tell your friends to join Facebook because you know then you’ll be able to befriend them, thus you’re getting a better experience.”
Poehlman said Myspace.com has become a tool with which the mainstream media advertises to millions of teens and adults every day.
“The idea of social networking is still new,” he said. “MySpace may be the AOL of the internet; a strong launch without strong long-term presence. It has had a hard time breaking out of the young 16 to 24 demographic.”
While many Boston University students do use the website — often in combination with Facebook.com — not many seem to be as taken with it as teens and artists.
College of Arts and Sciences senior Raquel Rodriguez said she only uses MySpace.com to keep in touch with family and friends from home.
“The only impact I would say MySpace has on my life is that it has given me another way of keeping in contact with my friends… and I probably use email less,” she said.
CAS senior Annie Turner said she acknowledges the risks that come with so few restrictions on the networking sites.
“It is less regulated — or restricted — than Facebook, but that is a double-edged sword,” she said. “The added freedom of content can make MySpace more interesting, but for younger users, it can serve as a more unsafe vehicle of socialization or information-sharing.
“There have been some scary stories of parents who blame MySpace for the questionable content it allowed their children to post or view, but this could happen anywhere on the internet, and MySpace, unlike Facebook, does not claim to screen its members,” she continued.
Diaz agreed with Turner that teens can very easily find themselves in unsafe situations through the use of MySpace.com, but she said they need to focus on sexual predators everywhere — not just online.
“They’re at your job and at the restaurant you go to — not just on the internet,” she said.
Diaz said it is important to remember that MySpace.com was created with good intentions and can still be beneficial. She offered advice for the younger crowds who use the website.
“Be who you are and don’t try to act sexy because you could attract the wrong people. Just be you,” she said. “Look at my pictures — in one, I’m wearing a top hat. It’s just me doing what I do.”