When Teens Tell All

Social Networking Sites Have Law Enforcement On Alert

(CBS)  Myspace.com user Jaclyn, 15, never gave her real name and lied about where she lived. But someone out there saw a picture on her profile with a basketball camp T-shirt and made contact.

"He was like, 'Hey my name is David and I went to basketball camp, too.' So I was like, oh, I was responding like a friend who I saw there," she explains.

Jaclyn communicated with David on and off for a few months. Then one day, "This really creepy, like, fat old guy just goes walking by and we all look at each other like, 'Who's that?' Like, we'd never seen him before," she recalls.

The man showed up at a skating rink, looking for Jaclyn and ran into her mother.

"I said 'Who are you?' " Jaclyn's mom Terry says. "And he goes 'My name is David,' and I said, 'How do you know my daughter?' And he says, 'I met her on MySpace.' "

Jaclyn says David also knew her friends' names, too, which she says was pretty "weird."

"I thought 'Oh, my goodness. He's stalking my daughter,' " Terry says. "I was scared and angry. I wanted him gone immediately."

Myspace.com has been cited in story after story of teen-related crises and law enforcement across the country is trying to cope.

In sleepy off-season Cape Cod, a usually quiet precinct, cops' suspicions were roused when photos were posted online of kids doing drugs and kids holding weapons in their hands.

Sgt. Warren Tobias of the Provincetown Police Department says thoughts of the Columbine shooting went through his mind when he saw the photo of the armed teen.

"Ran through everybody's minds. What's a 15-year-old doing with guns? Can't be good," says Sgt. Tobias.

Officers now comb through MySpace on a daily basis, alerting parents if they see trouble.

"We're actually eavesdropping on their private conversations is what we're doing," Sgt. Tobias says. And he admits they sometimes feel they're in a place they shouldn't be. "It's a very odd feeling."

But the question is: how do you keep over 75 million people safe in a virtual world?

"After the whole thing happened with the police and stuff, he still tried to talk to me," Jaclyn says of David. She says she simply tried to ignore him.

David was taken into custody but let go because there was nothing to charge him with. Jaclyn, meanwhile, is doing fine and is back on MySpace.

"A lot of kids know there are creeps out there but they tend to make it, 'I'm too smart for that,' " warns Aftab. "A lot of kids think they can tell the difference between a kid and a predator online. They can't. I can't. The FBI can't. None of us can."

Myspace.com declined The Early Show's many requests for an interview but say they are taking every precaution to keep kids safe, including hiring a new online safety chief.