Are Facebook and MySpace safer than chat rooms?

MySpace, Facebook, cell phones, chat rooms, text messaging, instant messaging, the Internet at large -- today's parents of teens have a lot of issues to deal with that previous generations never needed to. It can be scary trying to draw appropriate boundaries while still giving your teen room to breathe. Social networking sites like MySpace have long drawn criticism for being a playground for inappropriate behavior and putting kids at risk for sexual solicitation or harassment.

A new study of just over 1,588 10 to 15-year-olds found that, while 25% of these kinds of incidents do happen on social networking sites, the risk is far higher in chat rooms and during text messaging. The study's author believes that this means we should concentrate less on the format of the technology and more on empowering kids to use these new high-tech playgrounds appropriately.

But some are poking holes in her theory, saying that the kids she polled were too young. Facebook and MySpace don't allow kids under 13 and 14 to join, so it's possible that many children in her study have yet to be exposed to this sort of thing.

All I have to say is that I'm glad that I have a few years before this becomes an issue at our house! What do you parents of teens think?