Social networking site MySpace announced on Monday that it had reached an agreement with the top prosecutors of 49 states and the District of Columbia to abide by a set of standards designed to promote the safety of young teenagers that use the Web service.

The standards, dubbed the Principles of Social Networking, call for social-networking services to create safe environments for their users through design and features, education of parents and teenagers, cooperation with law enforcement and research into security technologies. As part of its agreement with National Association of Attorneys General's Social Networking Sites Executive Committee, MySpace pledged to make the profiles of young teenagers private, limit their contact with adults, and research ways of verifying identity and age.

"Unfortunately, sexual predators continue to use the Internet and flock to sites used by children, including social networking sites," Kelly A. Ayotte, Attorney General for New Hampshire and a member of the Executive Committee, said in a statement. "I am pleased that MySpace is taking this threat seriously through the commitments it has made in this agreement. However, it is only through a combination of technology, education and tough enforcement that we will stop these criminals from preying on our children."

MySpace's pledge to take additional steps to promote its younger users' safety came after nearly two years of sometimes-contentious discussions between the social networking site, a subsidiary of News Corp., and the group of state prosecutors. In 2006, MySpace hired a third-party firm to find MySpace users whose names were on the United States' lists of sex offenders, eventually resulting in more than 29,000 people being banned from the social-networking service.

The press conference announcing the deal came two days after prosecutors arraigned a New York City couple on charges that they allegedly contacted two young teenagers on MySpace, lured the girls to their apartment, and abused them.

MySpace pledged to create an Online Safety Task Force to research technologies that can improve child safety online. The group will report to the attorneys general every three months and issue a final report and recommendations at the end of 2008.