MySpace, there you go again, harming our poor, young, impressionable youth with your incessant spamming (thanks for the ads!) and providing an oasis for rapists and murderers.

The idea of a social networking website has its merits - socializing and, uh, networking - but when do the harmless aspects of sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster (Friendster is still around, right?) become harmful? They become dangerous the moment sexual predators and homicidal maniacs are allowed access to these infinite portals of possibility, places where even the most studied social networker can get duped into life-threatening situations.

Stopping sickos is as easy as shutting these sites down, meaning not easy at all.

MySpace, more than any other social networking site, has problems locking out minors and crazies, which is why they have agreed to a social-networking safety plan.

From CNET:

“Under the agreement, MySpace has pledged to work with the attorneys general on a set of principles to combat harmful material on social-networking sites (pornography, harassment, cyberbullying, and identity theft, among other issues), better educate parents and schools about online threats, cooperate with law enforcement officials around the country, as well as develop new technology for age and identity verification on social-networking sites.”

While I applaud the move towards a stalker-free MySpace, anybody with basic knowledge of the Internet (and half a brain) is smart enough to steer clear of ~~**fReE WeBCamS**~~ and JUST CLICK HERE spamathons; avoiding stalkers is a slippery slope unto itself. Sick individuals have always been within arm’s reach of doing damage to minors. But now, before the creeps find their victims, their victims find them. Still, the children aren’t always to blame.

We can point fingers all day, but the majority of the blame should go to parents who choose to remain clueless when it comes to their kids’ social life.

Face it: parents have got increasingly lazier towards their kids well-being. An Xbox 360 here, a flat-screen TV there and voila - total avoidance of your child’s life. That’s not the way it was when I was growing up. My parents always knew everything I was doing, for better or worse - but they are my parents, after all. My father would throw a cinder block at me if I even considered doing something immoral or illegal; now children sue their parents when they get spanked. Kids are running the roost.

Parents need to step up and take control of their kids’ lives, not the other way around. If little Alice is spending 20 hours a day talking to random strangers on MySpace without parental consent, then little Alice needs a cold, hard slap in the face - not a “talking to.”

If our parents complain about our Slacker Generation, imagine two generations down the road. Those kids are destined to be the laziest, most careless group of pansies to ever roam the planet.