"They're talking to their friends and it's all innocent. Foley acknowledged that many of the postings on MySpace are not objectionable. Some of the postings contained references to drinking, sex or violence, said the letter. In their letter, they wrote that "statistics from the Center for Missing and Exploited children report that one in five children, ages 10 to 17, is solicited on the Internet for sex through e-mail or chat." They also noted that many children, including some of their students, posed as 16-, 17- or sometimes 18-year-old teenagers. In addition, Foley said that the school is planning an information session for area parents from other Catholic schools about this topic. She and Carol Raffaele, principal, recently sent a letter home to parents about MySpace. Carmel School in Springfield, Mass., according to Debra Foley, a computer teacher at the school. Internet safety has always been a top concern at Mt. Many schools are coping with the problem of cyberbullying where someone posts something negative or harmful or harasses another person through the Internet. A story in the Philadelphia Inquirer reported other abuses, such as "two 10th-grade boys in Connecticut who used editing software to superimpose faces of female classmates on a lesbian sex photo." Pope John XXIII High School in Sparta, N.J., recently banned all Internet blogging in the school and at the students' homes. He tracked her down because she posted her job address on her page. In September 2004, a 16-year-old Port Washington, N.Y., girl was abducted and molested after trading messages on MySpace with a 37-year-old man. That's a very dangerous thing, dangerous for your personal safety and dangerous for your spiritual health," he said. "If you are not clear what your limits are on something like MySpace then you'll compromise yourself up and down. However, he said, bloggers must take a stand. "I see where it is beneficial to have places where you feel you can express your feelings," he said. One was that those creating pages make good moral choices. He stressed that the Web site was not "inherently evil." He said he had two levels of concerns regarding MySpace. The youth minister received a lot of feedback from campers, parents and teen members. Sears wrote to the teens he meets through his summer camp and year-long retreats and asked them to look at their pages "through the eyes of faith." "If there are things written (or pictures posted) that you would be embarrassed to look at with me (or a parent, grandparent, etc.) beside you, it's probably a good idea to make some changes," he wrote. "I decided to send an e-mail out to our entire camp community and just challenge them to raise the bar," he said. "I felt I couldn't, in good conscience and being a youth minister and having connections with young people, remain silent about it," he said. Sears, a father of four young sons, said he researched the site and prayed about what to do. It was all things that made my heart heavier," he said in an interview with The Catholic Observer, the official publication of the Diocese of Springfield, Mass. ![]() "The negativity, the swearing, the anti-religious sentiment that's on there. There were so many pictures that were inappropriate. It was something that the more I looked, the heavier my heart became. "I clicked on MySpace and went from site to site. Pat Sears, youth minister and co-founder of New Spirit Ministry, which runs retreats and a summer camp for young people, became acquainted with MySpace at the end of summer 2005 through an e-mail link from a teen. But there is a dark side to this new Web wonder. For many teens, it is a way to connect with others and let others know about them. WebPro News reported recently that this Web site has 32 million members with 130,000 being added each day. The 17-year-old was talking about, one of fastest-growing trends in the lives of young people.
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