The myspace top friends: Whats your number?

Have we succumbed to nothing but a space on someone’s page? Have we really become numbers in someone’s life---- and is our personal worth nothing but a rating in someone else eyes?

My daughter said to me that she was no longer a ‘top friend’ on one of her friends MySpace pages. This made me think not just for a moment, but for a few days.

Upon reflecting on the notion that she was obviously affected by losing that spot on her friend’s MySpace, it dawned on me that she too, just as so many others had placed ratings amongst each other.

MySpace continues to add to their Psychological well being yet once again.

I suddenly feel inclined to write about this friendship scale. I am appalled that this 'top friends' notion is adding to the esteem of our children.

Because she is home-schooled, we already implement too many structures, and shelter her as much as we can-- but I believe I must also allow her to be a teenager as much as possible. I don't like that my daughter has a MySpace but I allow her to have one under several conditions. That I have the password, that I can see it at anytime and that she use it just for communication with friends far away, and those friends who she hardly gets to see or talk to, and while I am in the room. Had I known it would become another method of yet another way to demean our kids then I would say "absolutely not remove your MySpace account", however I am a firm believer that I must raise her to acknowledge her friends as more than a place on a page, but to respect them for the person they are. My challenge to her is that she removes the ‘top friends’ application because I feel it sends a message that we have joined this method of judging each other.

Have we really become so judgmental of each other that we have started doing God's job? Not even God judges us that way. To God we are always number one!!!!

A few days later, as I found I became more disturbed about the ‘top friend’ application ...that I asked her how she felt about it. She said, “Mom, please........Like really I shouldn't be rated as a friend just by someone's top friends list. Like seriously. That's immature.” Ha! I said to her, but sweetheart........Do you realize you are doing exactly the same thing because you have only 5 friends on your top and one is higher than the other, and you had 72 total on your page to choose from. So my suggestion to her was to remove the rating. I challenged her to think about how God would feel about this. What would God think about rating each other…………

My concern is that kids already have enough pressures just trying to be who they are, and trying to find out where they fit, and where they don't, but to mechanically add to their personal growth just frightens me.

My prayer is that we stop and think about our actions and those actions that we didn’t even know were harmful. These ratings are not Christ like. They are worldly mannerisms of telling each other that 'one' of you is better than the 'other'. Another sad revelation in the lives of teens......

I digress……..

-marie