Plenty of under-18s will think it is about time to force social networking sites such as MySpace to verify the age of their users: having your mum sign up and ask to be your friend is just sooooo embarrassing. Unfortunately for the teenagers, however, it is their access that a coalition of US attorneys-general wants to restrict. Although they are doing so for noble reasons – to protect children from abuse online – their approach is misguided.

The attorneys-general are now threatening to take action against MySpace – the easiest target since joining the corporate mass of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation a couple of years ago – unless it takes steps to verify the age of under-18s who use its site.