Most teens safe in MySpace: Study

Two professors who have been focusing on cyberbullying for some time just presented a study of teenage MySpace use which found "most teens are behaving responsibly in the type of information they post about their lives," the Miami Herald reports. Prof. Sameer Hinduja, a criminology professor at Florida Atlantic University, and Justin Patchin, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, analyzed a randomly selected sample of 1,475 profiles that appeared to be teens' and found that 90% of those allowing public viewing do not include the users' full names; 40% of the full sample "were keeping their pages completely off-limits to everyone but their friends" (the default privacy setting for MySpace users who register as 14 or 15 years old); 4% listed IM contact info; 1% listed personal email addresses; and "just a handful" listed their phone numbers. On the flipside, "more than half of teenagers posted their pictures online, and an unspecified number of others provided detailed physical descriptions of themselves"; 5% had pictures of themselves in swimsuits or underwear and 15% of the profiles included suggestive pictures of their friends. The researchers did find that, though 90% didn't list full names, "they left other identifying information, including their first names (40%), hometown (81%) and high school (28%)." The researchers presented their as yet unpublished findings at an academic conference the Herald didn't name. Here's coverage from the Associated Press, which quotes Professor Patchin as saying that the benefits of social networking "far outweigh any potential risks."