All righty, then. I find myself in a parental/professional quandary. My pre-teen son has adamantly decided I cannot, under any circumstances, have access to his MySpace page. On the one hand, I think– the little $%^&*!! On the other hand, I am an advocate for both social media and privacy. I want him to get comfortable with these tools and have the privileges of private conversation within his own social network.

I realize I have parental control in this situation and can easily tell him to delete his account if he’s unwilling to allow me access. But, is that the right thing to do? If my son were journaling, would I insist on reading his entries? Probably not. Why do I want access? Well, yes, I’m nosy. I want to know who his friends are and how they conduct themselves in private. (Of course, they’re all very polite in my company.) I want to know what they really talk about… at this age, boys tend to stop disclosing social details to Mom.

And, as far as protecting him online… That would be a cop-out of an excuse. I can assure you, I have tried every conceivable trick I can think of to penetrate his MySpace page and have been unsuccessful. He simply will not add anyone he does not know.

A while back I posted on Twitter: “Is it wrong to read your son’s text messages?” I got a lot of interesting feedback. So, I open it up to the community– what do you think? Have you dealt with this? Know someone who has? I’d love to hear your opinions/suggestions on this.

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