Teachers, youth ministers sound warnings about popular Web site

Published: 2006-01-31

WESTFIELD, Mass. (CNS) -- Most teenagers are more than familiar with the networking Web site MySpace.com and similar sites where teens post online journals, photos and thoughts and interests to share with others. As youth ministers and teachers become more aware of the growing Web phenomenon, many of them do not like what they see. Pat Sears, a youth minister in the Springfield Diocese, said that at the end of last summer he became acquainted with MySpace.com. An e-mail he received from a teen included a link to the site, which has a reported 32 million members and another 130,000 are being added each day. "The more I looked, the heavier my heart became. There was so much negativity. There were so many pictures that were inappropriate. They were very revealing," he told The Catholic Observer, Springfield's diocesan newspaper. Sears, a father of four young sons, wrote to the teens he knows through his youth ministry work and asked them to examine their own personal Web pages "through the eyes of faith."

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