If Senator Cecil Staton from Georgia has his way kids will no longer be able to look up their friends on social networking sites. He has proposed a bill making it illegal for minors to have social networking profiles without a parents permission. He also wants to allow parents access to their child's personal profile. He wants to make the law so strict that if they allow children (minors under 18) to create profiles the owner of the social networking site could be fined and possibly even go to jail.

Now I know that it's not safe out there in the cyber world for kids. So many innocent teens (and younger) have met up with people they thought were good people or other kids, only to find out the hard way that their are some really bad people in the world. I as a parent myself want to keep kids safe online. On the other hand I don't think restricting their access to other kids is the way to do it.

MySpace has people posing as kids on their trying to catch the bad people and protect the kids. They have a policy about deleting profiles that they suspect are fake. They are really trying. I know this is no guarantee but if you kick the kids off MySpace they'll just go somewhere else. What do you think kids did online before social networking sites? They still managed to chat on chat boards and post in forums all over the Net. They created personal Web sites and linked them together.

Anyone out there up to creating a social networking site just for kids? It would be a hard thing to regulate but, if successful, may just be worth it.

Should kids be allowed to have social networking profiles?