The Few. The Proud. ...

... The MySpace Users.

I recently talked about different ways that society is using MySpace, and another has cropped up. According to Associated Press, the US Marines are using MySpace for recruiting:

Teens looking to hook up with a friend on the popular Web community MySpace may bump into an unexpected buddy: the U.S. Marine Corps. So far, over 12,000 Web surfers have signed on as friends of the Corps in response to the latest military recruiting tactic.

Other branches of the military are, they say, expected to follow.

There's criticism, of course:

"It's kind of obnoxious of them to be using something that's sort of like a youth domain, to kind of come in and really sucker youth into something they're not really explaining fully," Morse said.

But that's the same criticism they've gotten for going to high schools, shopping malls, and other places where they can find kids hanging out without their parents around. I'm no fan of the military, but I can't really criticise them for recruiting wherever they find the opportunity, and with a voluntary military program they have to recruit aggressively. And if they can be credible in the high-tech world, that probably says some good things. But this highlights the general advice that parents have to be aware of what's going on in their children's lives.