If you weren’t already convinced that the internet is fraught with perils for our kids, maybe this will convince you — North Carolina’s Attorney General is reporting that there are over 29,000 known sex offenders with pages on MySpace:

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office said in a statement that based on MySpace’s own estimates, the number of registered sex offenders with MySpace pages under their own names was four times more than the company’s previous estimate.

Cooper is proposing that North Carolina pass legislation to ban registered sex offenders from using social networking sites that allow minors, and strengthening other anti-child pornography and criminal penalties for Internet solicitation of minors and children for sex. The proposal also suggests that social networking sites’ underage users be required to get parental permission before registering and posting personal information.

Young people have been the early adopters and most avid users of social networking sites, making them targets for sexual predators.

And this only includes the geniuses that used their real names, who knows what the real count is. If you only have a vague awareness of what your kid is doing on sites like MySpace, you need to get more involved — they have the ability to post tons of personal information such as hometown, age, school, as well as uploading personal photos. And unless they have their accounts set to private, any registered MySpace user can view their profiles.

This concludes The Imperfect Parent’s “Give You More Things to Worry About” moment of the week.

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