This story, while largely a hysterical tract about how the military is using MySpace to lure young adults into Middle East quagmires — typical of the attack-everyone-who-has-anything-to-do-with-military-advertising movement — has an interesting statistic: 80 percent of MySpace users are 18 or older.

This indicates that my idea of limiting MySpace membership (the message feature of which, if my experience is any indication, frequently serves as an outlet for pornography spam) to adults is quite feasible. You could even grandfather in existing minors.

The story also has a catalogue of MySpace abuses by child predators. The stated policy of the site is to allow anyone 14 or older to create a profile, posting photos and personal information for public consumption in the process.

Finally, an aside — the funniest part of the article is its last paragraph:

“If bios at the site are to be believed, there are young Iraqis on MySpace. What if you, an American kid with an Iraqi MySpace ‘friend,’ check in with that friendly Marine Corps recruiter, enlist, and are sent to Iraq by your MySpace military ‘friend,’ and the latter ‘friend’ calls on you to kill the former? Does MySpace have any reservations about setting up a system where such a scenario could become a reality?”

Convinced me. No, seriously.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.