School Tragedy Related to Internet Safety
I don't genearlly write about youth safety particularly, but the recent shooting at a Colorado high school highlights some interesting issues about youth internet safety. Cnn.com indicates that the shooter may have pre-selected his sexual assault victims, hostiges, and murder victim on MySpace.com. (Read Article).
Social networking cites have become all the rage. I've written more generally about child predators before; about predators using these online services as a gateway into the juvenile's lives, minds, and unfortunately sometimes more. This case, however, sheds light on a slightly different issue. Internet safety may not solely concern the juvenile's interactions on the internet -- and any face-to-face connection that might result. Rather, predators might research potential victims without ever contacting them online, thus skipping the intermediate online connection that might seem like adequate protection from predators.
I remember being twelve, surfing AOL profiles and chatting with random individuals online. Somehow it felt safe, comfortable, and completely non-threatened. At the same time, all real personal information remaind hidden -- my name, address, school, etc. Nowadays, however, social networking cites facilitate the dissemination of a large amount of personal information, and the cite users may not know who has this information.
It is not clear how to protect youths and juveniles from those who might use their posted information for malicious reasons. (Or how to protect adults for that matter.) The Internet is a free forum, and that is very much its beauty. On the other hand, perhaps the awful tragedy that happened in Colorado will shed some light on the danger inherent in posting pictures, detailed information, and specific loations of youths online.
Social networking cites have become all the rage. I've written more generally about child predators before; about predators using these online services as a gateway into the juvenile's lives, minds, and unfortunately sometimes more. This case, however, sheds light on a slightly different issue. Internet safety may not solely concern the juvenile's interactions on the internet -- and any face-to-face connection that might result. Rather, predators might research potential victims without ever contacting them online, thus skipping the intermediate online connection that might seem like adequate protection from predators.
I remember being twelve, surfing AOL profiles and chatting with random individuals online. Somehow it felt safe, comfortable, and completely non-threatened. At the same time, all real personal information remaind hidden -- my name, address, school, etc. Nowadays, however, social networking cites facilitate the dissemination of a large amount of personal information, and the cite users may not know who has this information.
It is not clear how to protect youths and juveniles from those who might use their posted information for malicious reasons. (Or how to protect adults for that matter.) The Internet is a free forum, and that is very much its beauty. On the other hand, perhaps the awful tragedy that happened in Colorado will shed some light on the danger inherent in posting pictures, detailed information, and specific loations of youths online.
posted by eponcz at 1:29 PM
1 Comments:
Thank you so much for your interesting post.
I agree that being armed with the knowledge about what is illegal/wrong/bad and what to do about it is a very good strategy.
I also think that the simple act of opening up a dialog about what they see online, how they react to it, and how they are not solely in the positions to be victims of it is very helpful.
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