Virtual Lives: Your Child's Secret High-Tech World

There's a another world out there and your child is living in it. To help you sort it all out we've put together a quick guide to your child's cyber world and virtual friends. This is another in our series of articles exploring the new terrain and unprecedented pressures of parenting today. By helping you make sense of what's happening in your children's world, we hope you'll feel more comfortable and confident in your efforts to raise happy, well-adjusted kids. - The Editors

By Anne Chappell Belden

At 15, Heather Simon* is beautiful and academically gifted. Her mother says Heather doesn't drink or take drugs, and has never had a boyfriend. Well, not one who actually stood in the same room, anyway. But she has had quite a few virtual boyfriends, all of whom she met through her computer - via instant messaging (IM) and her personal profile on MySpace.com.

"Why is she talking to someone in Arizona?" her mother, Sue Simon,* asks, referring to one of Heather's online relationships. "You read her messages, and they say they love each other and they've never even seen each other face to face."

Even more disconcerting to Sue, however, is that Heather's MySpace profile includes her photograph and personal information, such as the name of her San Jose high school and the fact that she is a cheerleader. At her mother's urging, Heather marked the Web site private, so that only "friends" with permission can view it.

"But she has 500 so-called 'friends' on MySpace," Sue says.

On a recent trip to the mall, a teenage boy recognized Heather from her MySpace profile. "She thought it was funny," Sue says. "I said, 'That's scary!'"

Heather spends three hours a day online. When not on her computer, she's text-messaging friends on her cell phone. Sometimes, her mom says, she's on the computer and text messaging at the same time.

"She would die without it," Sue says. "It's a battle every single day with her over her phone and the computer."