Students maintain prom date blogs online

East Valley parents will not have to snoop around this prom season to read about the event in their children’s diaries. Students who used to lock their diaries in their bedrooms now post their daily confessions, rantings and exploits for the world to see on Web logs — or blogs.

Many of these personal Internet message boards include names, birth dates and photographs of the authors along with contact information such as e-mail addresses and instantmessaging screen names.

The technology means Chandler parents can go on the Internet, along with complete strangers, and view pho- tographs of their children carousing early Sunday morning in a hotel suite following Hamilton High School’s prom. One snapshot shows a girl holding a beer with the caption: "Still rockin at 6 in the AM."

A Scottsdale student reports on her blog that she did not have sex following Chaparral High School’s prom on Saturday. "As for my date . . . well, let’s just say I might as well have gone alone," she writes. "But it was fun anyways."

Meanwhile, a student from Tempe’s Corona del Sol High School returned from prom at 2 a.m. Sunday and reported on her blog: "No alcohol was consumed tonight by me, and I’m still a virgin." But her mother, apparently, was not impressed. A follow-up message Sunday begins, "What I learned from my mom today: I am a horrible excuse for a human being."

The posting generated four responses, including the following from an 18-year-old classmate: "I love you and you make my life happy, and if your mom was mean to you we have a guest bedroom."

The online exhibitionism alarms Mesa Unified School District webmaster Loyal Clarke, who said most parents have no idea what their children are doing on the Internet.

"It’s like a 21st century graffiti — anything goes," Clarke said. "These kids think that only a limited group of people are looking at their blogs, but there are predators out there who do nothing but look at these things."

Popular blog communities such as LiveJournal allow subscribers to search for specific bloggers by age, city and interests.

A LiveJournal search this week for Scottsdale children between 14 and 18 produced more than 1,000 matches. Among that group, six teens listed drama as an interest, 14 listed band and 27 listed sex.

"I think you need to be concerned as a parent, and then become informed," Clarke said.

A good way to start, he said, would be for parents to read their children’s

blogs.

"It’s perfectly ethical to do that," he said. "The kids are making it public to the world, and parents are part of that world."

But Corona del Sol freshman Sarah Hayden, 14 , disagreed.

"It would be just as if they were sneaking into our room and looking through a diary," she said, "because they would be doing it when they know that we don’t want them to."

She said her blog gives her a place to vent about things in her life — or people who make her angry.

"We actually kind of want those people to see it so they would know how we feel without actually having to tell them," Hayden said. "And I guess sometimes it’s used just to get attraction from someone."

Many East Valley students said their parents would not know how to find their blogs, anyway.

"My parents don’t even know about it," said Chandler High School freshman Nicole Yannacci, 15. "The kids know way more than the parents."

She said she takes precautions when posting information about herself online, but she acknowledged that she has put things on her blog that she would not want her parents to see.

Yannacci is not alone.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, D.C., released a survey last month of 1,100 parentchild pairs. About 62 percent of teens in the survey said they do things online that they wouldn’t want their parents to know about.

The survey also showed a disconnect between the perceptions of parents and teens about household rules regarding the Internet. While 62 percent of parents said they monitor the Internet use of their children, only 33 percent of teens said their parents check up on them.

Amanda Lenhart, a research specialist who oversaw the survey, said high school students today belong to the first generation of "digital natives" who view Internet socializing as something as natural as talking on the telephone.

"The online world and the offline world are not different things for kids anymore," she said.

Jordyn Dehaan, another 15-year-old Chandler High freshman, said parents have no reason to worry about blogs.

She said most teens only socialize online with people they know in the real world, and blog communities allow users to block access to their sites and to withhold contact information. She said most teens are savvy about predators lurking in the virtual world.

"You always have to be smart about who you talk to," she said.

Tips

teens

• Guard your identifying information (name, sex, age, address, school, teams). It only takes a little information for a predator to identify you.

• Always remember, responsible adults do not pursue relationships with kids and teens.

• Make your username generic and anonymous.

• Make your online profile generic and anonymous.

• Don’t send pictures to Internet friends.

• Remember that chat room friends are not

More online

www.livejournal.com

www.myspace.com

www.xanga.com