I was just sort of using MySpace as an example. It is blocked. In fact, before I blocked it, I forbade her use it and she had her myspace page delete on her own initiative. But kids work out systems when they are blocked from MySpace, like they have kids who aren't blocked post to their pages via communication with AIM. Block chat clients, they use e-mail. Block e-mail they find some other unblocked web forums and use those. Ultimately you just have to lock them off the Internet, and then what's the point of the useful aspects of the Internet? (And they use the phone, so you have to forbid phone use.) Actually, Lauren is a pretty good kid who seemed to understand why I gave her a chance at myspace, she knew I had access to her account and could read what people (even in a private, allegedly local kids only group) were sending here -- that was the issue, what she was receiving, not what she was sending. And part of it is just if we say "no computer while we're out", that's what we mean, no matter what she's using it for, and constantly resetting the times on parental controls in a full-time job.
To cut a long philosophical point short, I'd prefer at 14 she not use the Internet for social interaction at all, until she figures out more traditional social interaction appropriate for her age. But, not just her friends, but about every girl her age she knows, this is what they do: TV on, laptop on knee, cell phone to ear, all going at once. I'm glad to take her to concerts, movies, shopping (she needed new underwear, there was a good two-day sale on premium, quality brands, her mom, my wife, was snowed in at work and on call on top of that, so she even let me take her underwear shopping, which, amazingly, she handled so well it was probably more uncomfortable for me than her, and I don't get particularly uncomfortable based on socialized quirks like that). Still, I don't want to cut her off from socializing with peers. It may come to that, to some degree. We try putting her with kids who aren't really allowed Internet use -- I think a lot of them manage to get access to it more than the kids who CAN use it -- and this is all because of religious reasons or based on extreme, irrational moral beliefs that don't jibe with ours or hers, so they aren't compatible friends for Lauren.
At any rate, it boils down to the fact the Internet is a great tool for various uses. So are hammers. I know, I have a hammer. I don't spend all my time with my hammer. We just want her to get a balanced life, not a Luddite, anti-Internet, anti-new-technology life. Especially social skills that don't depend upon Internet social interaction, but are only augmented by the convenience and distance-closing nature of Internet social interaction.
