By BETH J. HARPAZ

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — A report earlier this month that MySpace removed 90,000 sex offenders from its Web site had me wondering: Maybe all those moms who spy on their kids online are doing the right thing.

Yeah, that's right. Moms are spying. They're reading kids' text messages, hacking into their e-mail and checking what Web sites they've been visiting.

Now, I admit to having been a Mommy Mata Hari at one time. I used to check my son's MySpace page to see what he was up to. I even joined Facebook in order to friend him.

I didn't realize he'd have to approve me before I could access his Facebook profile. He refused.

So I resorted instead to that time-honored maternal tradition: Nagging.

"Don't friend strangers! Don't say stupid things online! Don't put up pictures of yourself on a Web site that will cause your future wife to divorce you!" (Not to mention that could cause your current mother to have a heart attack.)

But is a talking-to from mom enough to protect teens online?

I sought opinions from Dr. Herbert Mandell, a psychiatrist and medical director of KidsPeace, a 126-year-old national children's crisis organization, and also from North Carolina's attorney general, Roy Cooper, who co-chairs the State Attorney General Task Force on Social Networking. The task force worked with MySpace to find and block those sex offenders.

To my surprise, the lawman from North Carolina and the psychiatrist from KidsPeace both agreed that it's more effective for parents to talk to teenagers than to spy on them.

"Talk with your kids about Internet use, just like you would talk to them about drinking, drugs, sex or anything else," Cooper said. "The Internet is an incredible tool. Your children can find answers with the click of a mouse that used to take hours at the card catalog. But it has a dark side, particularly when children communicate online with people they don't know."

Cooper pointed out there are risks not only on Facebook and MySpace, but also with Xbox Live, where kids compete against players they may not know.

He added that "parents should talk to kids about things they post online about themselves," including pictures, videos and comments that can be seen by strangers, future employers and others. "And tell them not to accept friends on social networking sites unless they know who they are."