Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - 13yo girl kills self over cruel MySpace prank done by adult neighbor.

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- - 13yo girl kills self over cruel MySpace prank done by adult neighbor. (https://thetfp.com/tfp/general-discussion/127522-13yo-girl-kills-self-over-cruel-myspace-prank-done-adult-neighbor.html)

mixedmedia

11-17-2007 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

jesus, what a fucked up situation.
this seems redundant. i dont know.

1.
particular:
i detest myspace.
maybe its the genuinely ugly interface design. maybe its the importance that such a shallow space has assumed. maybe it's rupert murdoch. maybe it's the fact that it is SO fucking stupid. such spaces seem to encourage more stupidity. it also encourages lying, which we call "manipulation of identity or persona"...

nothing seems to me more tedious that stupid people lying to each other.

2.

general:

one question it raises--apart from the particulars of the story, about which i am having some trouble making a judgment simply because we really dont know enough about megan to be able to ascribe blame or explain much--one question this raises concerns the nature of internet communication, the curious way in which a 2-d persona gets filled in by others with projections, the way in which these projections replace the actual 3-d person behind the persona, the extent to which these projections enable irresponsibility, the extent to which they make responsibility impossible nearly.
you dont really know who you are interacting with.
you dont have any cues that'd indicate when you might have gone too far.

internet communication is in many ways the pure expression of capitalist social relations: we make ourselves into things and treat others as things.
within this general repetition of capitalist social relations, we pretend that we dissent.
there is something structurally fucked up about all of it.

so for example you can abstract yourself from the possibility that what you write inflicts pain: you can turn it into a parlor game because the target of your unspooling of whatever sadistic impulse you allow to unspool is an abstraction, not a person.
you can enjoy what in 3-d would be sadism: the replacement of a human being with an abstraction based on your own fantasies enables the erasure of
any ethical consideration that would get in the way of such in 3-d.

think about it: you see parallel activity here: think about the way in which the community deals or does not deal with those who might have deep psychological issues who turn up. collectively, we cant even tell if these issues are real or if they follow from a process of persona construction, whether what gets written is mimetic or if it is fiction. this because despite what you might prefer to pretend obtains about what people write, there is no agreement AT ALL about that relation.
so how is anyone supposed to make a judgment about how to communicate if you cant even figure out the status of what you are reading?
self-limitation.
but the abstraction that shapes all communication over the net militates against that.
so when you let go and allow your inner asshole to come out to play, you can pretend that nothing is at stake.

from the above, it should be obvious that i find netcommunication to be quite alienating, frankly.
i write stuff here, but in general am acutely aware that you dont really know me on the basis of it.
you write stuff here and no-one knows you on that basis. they know fragments of you. they fill in the rest with projections. so do you with reference to everyone else.
but there is a community because of the degree to which the parameters (the rules and assumptions) that shape tfp reinforce our inclinations to want to see in it a community.
because we share at one level or another the desire to see a community, we act as though there is one.
so there is one.

nothing like that obtains on myspace.
that is why myspace is a cesspool.

This is true. Hell, we even project and fill-in-the-spaces with people we know very intimately in 'real life.' Which makes the nature of internet friendship kind of specious at best.

This is interesting food for thought.

Wow, what a world we've come to (kind of) live in.

Willravel

11-17-2007 12:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

Yes, really. I grew up, that's my university.

Ah, the "I didn't die between now and when I was born" university. I'm pretty sure that no one recognizes that as proof of any expertise by your being alive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

so what you're really saying is that 30 year old adults aren't any more responsible than 13 year olds, because your so called 'idiot pranksters' were PARENTS and supposedly ADULTS. If you can seriously sit there and say that the 13 year old and the 'pranksters' have equal responsibility, then your judgement, intelligence, and opinions are of serious questionability. You'll certainly think different IF your own daughter were the one that committed suicide because of the 'circumstances'.

You capitalizing "ADULTS" doesn't make them more guilty. They did something massively stupid. No one is arguing against that. Did they directly cause her suicide? Of course not. Just like if I called her stupid and she killed herself, I'd just be a jackass who wasn't responsible for her suicide.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

then fucking report me moron. I made a reference, not a threadjack. One would THINK you were more intelligent than that, given some of the threads you've made on here, but that was obviously a facade because you've demonstrated a complete and total LACK of intelligence from this topic alone.

Calm down right now. I've never been, am not, nor will I ever be a moron. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty damn smart. In particular, I'm smart about things psychological because I went to school for 4 years and learned about it. Yes, I learned about the mechanisms involved in things like suicide. I even volunteered at a suicide type hotline. So who do you think is demonstrating a lack of experneice and understanding of the subject?

analog

11-17-2007 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

then fucking report me moron.

You know that's not appropriate.

I don't think your side of this discussion is furthered by calling anyone a moron.

I think the reasonable thing to do would be to apologize, and edit it out. Take a step back, you know it's not correct. I think you should make it right.

dksuddeth

11-17-2007 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

just because you went and got some sort of college degree does not mean that you are more of an expert in some area than some other person who did not obtain said degree. Having seen, by first hand direct experience, that letters after a persons name does not make them smarter than another person who doesn't, assures me that you most likely know little more than I do about any particular given subject. Be that as it may, analog has it right insofar as I do owe you an apology for the moron comment. While you certainly aren't a moron, you aren't the all knowing, all seeing person you say you are when it comes to the human psyche....at least in this issue.

I personally think you are dead wrong in the belief that those 3 supposed adults did not have a direct effect on this teenage girls suicide. They had more responsibility than most, considering that it was their words and actions alone that contributed to an already emotionally troubled childs instability. If that can't be seen by you, then I dare say that you should at least rethink some of your ideology in human behavior.

*Nikki*

11-17-2007 01:47 PM

Everyone needs to realize that we are all going to see this issue in a different light.

Arguing over things that NONE OF US know to be fact is doing nothing but making this tragic event even sadder.

Willravel

11-17-2007 02:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

just because you went and got some sort of college degree does not mean that you are more of an expert in some area than some other person who did not obtain said degree.

Of course it does. Very much so, in fact. Maybe you'd like to let the guy who cuts your lawns be your psychologist? What do you think "expert" means?

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

Having seen, by first hand direct experience, that letters after a persons name does not make them smarter than another person who doesn't, assures me that you most likely know little more than I do about any particular given subject. Be that as it may, analog has it right insofar as I do owe you an apology for the moron comment. While you certainly aren't a moron, you aren't the all knowing, all seeing person you say you are when it comes to the human psyche....at least in this issue.

I'm not the family's psychologist, nor is anyone posting in this thread. We can see some of the facts behind the article, though, and based on those facts it's not unreasonable to conclude that this girl was a suicide risk with or without myspace and the idiots on myspace. That's the bottom line.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

/I disagree

That's cool with me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

If that can't be seen by you, then I dare say that you should at least rethink some of your ideology in human behavior.

My ideology is based on 300 years of psychology as a science. How are you diagnosing her?

roachboy

11-17-2007 02:32 PM

Modboy Intervention:

Comrades:

I have no idea how this became an exercise in academic degree fetishism and its inverse (well, I can read so I know to a certain extent) but this turn is a waste of time, advancing nothing and functioning only to enable pissy ad hominems.

It is time to change direction.

Ustwo

11-17-2007 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

just because you went and got some sort of college degree does not mean that you are more of an expert in some area than some other person who did not obtain said degree.

People keep telling me that about the environment here for some reason :lol:

Sort of funny when I have a actual B.S. degree in Tree Hugging though that wasn't the official title of the program.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

Will threatened dksuddeth its kinda obvious how that would go ;)

But back to topic...

We have what was obviously a VERY unstable girl.
We have an idiot parent who pushed a girl who was obviously on the brink over the edge.

Actually I'm not sure what the issue is. What does myspace have to do with this beyond a medium of conversation?

Perhaps the only issue is, is someone responsible if their actions lead to someones suicide. I'd have to say no unless that was the goal of the perpetrator who knew the person was suicidal to start with.

Strange Famous

11-17-2007 02:43 PM

I have to admit, it is kind of unseemly that a discussion about some poor kid driven to suicide just ends up in some kind of argument about gun control, and people debating whether they are much cleverer than someone else, and now apparently environmentalism?

I think, to get back to the original point - what I personally am interested in is whether people agree or disagree that this campaign is ultimately damaging to the parents ability to recover from this tragedy?

To me, the crusade (while understandable) mires them in their grief and - while it is a tool to cope with it at the start, ends up tying to them to it.

Ustwo

11-17-2007 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strange Famous

I think, to get back to the original point - what I personally am interested in is whether people agree or disagree that this campaign is ultimately damaging to the parents ability to recover from this tragedy?

To me, the crusade (while understandable) mires them in their grief and - while it is a tool to cope with it at the start, ends up tying to them to it.

When you figure out a good way to get over the loss of a child, let the world know.

This is not an uncommon side effect. Parents have pushed in the past for new legal protections after losing a child to what seemed a preventable thing, Megan's law being the most obvious example I can think of without research.

ring	11-17-2007 03:01 PM

Campaigns and crusades for what exactly, cyber-bully laws?

Some adult figure to take full blame?

Please specify.

I believe the ability to overcome any tragedy lies within the support system of said victims and other nebulous factors that have made 'survivors' out of tragedy,while others sink beneath the quagmire of despair.

Strange Famous

11-17-2007 03:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

I agree that this is not uncommon, and that there is no way ever to "get over it"... but my feeling is still that becoming so involved in the memory of their child is harmful.

I am not suggesting they should, or possibly could, forget them... but making the memory and the tragedy a central point of their life - by a campaign, a new law they want, or so on - is just going to cause more pain, over a longer period of time.

___

Its a similar logic (although I dont for one second say it is the same thing) as people in prison who beat up sex offenders and paedophiles especially I think.

They dont do it so much because they feel some moral duty to... its more, its the only way when you are inside to somehow show you are a good parent. The fact of being in jail fundamentally is usually a bad thing, and most people in jail are bad parents - but beating up some nonce, showing your righteous anger - is somehow a proof to themselves and the world that they love their own kids.

And again - I do not suggest that these are equivalent things - only the same mechanism.

Shauk

11-17-2007 06:20 PM

if anyone wants to add me to thier myspace to fuck with me and try to get me to kill myself, good luck

anyways

http://www.myspace.com/Shauk

cheers, hahaha.

I agree with willravel on this. She was already messed up. if it wasn't this it would have been the 1st time a boy dumped her in real life or something

opus123

11-17-2007 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Boy that's sad. Megan was a ticking time bomb. If it wasn't some asshole on myspace, it would have been someone or something else.

I don't think so. The kids hormones were probably fluctuating wildly that year, but in a few months they could have leveled out for good. Who knows for sure, but from what was written, it was a sad perfect storm of bad timing. I remember when I had bad acne and I felt like everyone was staring and if enough people in my life went after me and harassed me, then it could have ended badly, who knows what we would do under tons of stress around puberty.

The adult should have been charged with stalking and fraud imho.....

Jonathan

Plan9

11-17-2007 06:55 PM

Quote:

She was heavy and for years had tried to lose weight. She had attention deficit disorder and battled depression. Back in third grade she had talked about suicide, Tina says, and ever since had seen a therapist.

But things were going exceptionally well. She had shed 20 pounds, getting down to 175. She was 5 foot 5½ inches tall.

I like our excuses-based culture. I blame rap music, Teen Vogue, and MySpace.

Responsibility?! That metamagic is for other people!

World's King

11-17-2007 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shauk

I added you.

Not cause I want you to kill yourself...

Plan9

11-17-2007 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

I don't believe it. I think Mom is in a bit of CYA mode.

Legal advice like Johnny Cochran from beyond the grave!

Shauk

11-17-2007 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by World's King

I added you.

Not cause I want you to kill yourself...

werd

Hyacinthe

11-17-2007 11:50 PM

ditto what WK said Shauk
_____________________________________

This is a tragic turn of events, yes what those adults did to the Megan was wrong, they should have known better and responded to the ending of Megans friendship with their daughter in a more mature fashion - they did not.

However if I was a parent and had a daughter who had been in therapy for 5 years (working off the Australian system of third year being 8yrs old) with depression and had talked of suicide before I would be extremely hesistant to let her have a myspace page no matter how much she begged, this is not the first time one of these 'social networking' pages has been misused. Nor would I want my teenage daughter becoming so emotionally dependent on a teenage boy she and I have never met.

Moving away from the blame game however ....

This new law is not the only way Megans family is clinging to her memory

Quote:

On the window outside Megan's room is an ornamental angel that Ron turns on almost every night. Inside are pictures of boys, posters of Usher, Beyonce and on the dresser a tube of instant bronzer.

This strikes me as very unhealthy behaviour, I respect the fact that Megans family has not thus far been able to move on from her loss but this act of setting up almost a shrine to her memory is not a healthy reaction. I worry greatly about the mental and emotional damage that will be done to Megans parents when they no longer have their goal of changing the laws regarding internet harassment to focus their grief and anger.

The bit of this article that angered me the most is the other families action of suing the Meiers for the destruction of their foosball table and driving on the front lawn. It's an amazingly petty action when you consider the fact that they contributed to Megans death.

Ourcrazymodern?

11-17-2007 11:55 PM

I have no myspace
I probably won't get one
-will that save my life?

-apologies to those concerned.

Strange Famous

11-18-2007 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyacinthe

The bit of this article that angered me the most is the other families action of suing the Meiers for the destruction of their foosball table and driving on the front lawn. It's an amazingly petty action when you consider the fact that they contributed to Megans death.

pretty incredible. hopefully it would be thrown out of court and they will lose all costs and be publically humiliated.

most of all, I am surprised they want to do something that will publicize their name - I guess it is a sign that they really and genuinely feel no remorse.

Telluride

11-18-2007 11:30 PM

This is a pretty messed up thing to do...especially for an adult to do it to a child. But if the girl killed herself over this, it leads me to believe that she may have been teetering on the edge of suicide anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyacinthe

I agree. Unfortunately they may have a sound basis for this lawsuit because what was done to their property is almost certainly illegal.

Miss Mango

11-19-2007 02:33 PM

Quote:

I was thinking the same thing. Then I was also thinking why were these parents letting her hang out there if she wasnt old enough to begin with? Last I knew, it was the parents that make the rules, not the kids in the house.

Jenna

11-19-2007 02:49 PM

I don't think the adult should be charged with murder, she didn't have that intent, but she should be charged with harrassment or something of that sort.

I had extreme self-esteem issues at her age, and hell, I was into the myspace scene as well. At least her parents moderated her. Mine didn't have a clue as to what was going on. I don't think I would have ever resorted to killing myself, but none the less. I was a target of this type of harrassment as well. I think there should be some type of punishment for it.

Plan9

11-19-2007 03:11 PM

Should we regulate the Internet or regulate our children?

Which is more feasible? Which is legally easier?

Aaah, what a mess.

kurty[B]

11-19-2007 04:12 PM

/me remembers to add myspace.com, facebook.com and any other social masturbation sites to point to 127.0.0.1 in any host file of any PC my child touches. Guess I'll have to befriend the IT guys at my kid's elementary, middle and high schools and see if they feel the same way I do about those sites and are happy to block them.

Or maybe I can just share my distaste for those sites with my kid, and he might realize real friends are better than an online popularity contest.

I do feel sorry for the girl's parents. I don't feel sorry for the girl. I'm sorry, but I have little sympathy for suicide "victims" (no matter what age). To me, that is the most selfish thing a person can do. There's a lot to this story that feels so one-sided I don't know what to think, but I do know that suicide is simply an easy answer for "difficult" problems, and hurts the ones you love more than the "victim" themselves.

If I were the girl's parent I'm not sure how I would react, but I imagine it would result in much larger fines than $1000 in property damage. I would have to move away, I don't think I could bear being in close proximity to the other family. I'd just be an asshole, out watering the lawn and giving dirty looks to everyone who walked by. Become that old creepy guy that everyone whispers about the "tragedy" that once happened there and he's never been the same since. Yeah, I feel sorry for the parents; not the girl.

mrklixx

11-19-2007 06:16 PM

I think dksuddeth is trying to get willtravel to kill himself. Would that be normal?

Plan9

11-19-2007 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kurty[B]

/me remembers to add myspace.com, facebook.com and any other social masturbation sites to point to 127.0.0.1 ... Yeah, I feel sorry for the parents; not the girl.

:thumbsup: Excellent response.

ring	11-19-2007 06:43 PM

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Psycho Dad

11-19-2007 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kurty[B]

Guess I'll have to befriend the IT guys at my kid's elementary, middle and high schools and see if they feel the same way I do about those sites and are happy to block them.

You may have to help them. The IT guy at my kid's school can't handle simple tasks such as that.

Infinite_Loser

11-19-2007 07:27 PM

Sucks to be the kids parents. Really, that sounds heartless and all, but it was the Megan's decision to kill herself. I don't see how someone call be held for accountable for the self-inflicted harm of others.

Plan9

11-20-2007 03:52 AM

...because in America we have the freedom to stand up any frivolous lawsuit we desire regardless of logic!

Telluride

11-20-2007 08:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jennaboo4u

I don't think the adult should be charged with murder, she didn't have that intent, but she should be charged with harrassment or something of that sort.

I want to begin by stating that I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here (since I *don't* think the adults should be charged with murder), but I think it's possible for someone to get prosecuted for an unintentional death. Don't drunk drivers who kill people get charged with vehicular manslaughter?

analog

11-20-2007 11:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Telluride

[...] but I think it's possible for someone to get prosecuted for an unintentional death.

Those still involve being responsible in the death, whether intended or not.

You can't hold anyone responsible for someone's suicide.

The_Jazz

11-21-2007 05:51 AM

Criminal charges: no. I don't think that they pass the intent to harm test.

Civil charges: oh hells yeah. They harrassed the girl and inflicted emotional harm, not to mention pain and suffering.

She's already told the police that she feels responsible (see the Smoking Gun's police report), probably because she is at least partially responsible. To me, this seems like a great use of the civil court system to right a wrong. Then again, I'm the guy that insists that the term "frivilous lawsuit" is a misnomer.

snowy

11-30-2007 09:41 PM

I thought this was a great response and analysis of the situation, in addition to the cultural causes of this sort of phenomenon:

Quote:

Megan Meier, a 13-year-old from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, killed herself last year after an online relationship she believed she was having with a cute 16-year-old boy named Josh went very sour. What she didn’t know – what her parents would learn six weeks after her death – was that “Josh” was the fictitious creation of Lori Drew, a then-47-year-old neighbor and the mother of one of Megan’s friends.

Or former friends. Megan had, essentially, dropped the other girl when she’d changed schools and tried to put an unhappy chapter of her junior high school life – fraught with weight problems and depression – behind her.

Drew’s daughter, one assumes, would have eventually gotten over it. But Drew didn’t. Instead, she got revenge.

She created a fake MySpace profile (she later told police she’d done so to “find out what Megan was saying online” about her daughter, according to a sheriff’s report). Working with her daughter, she led Megan to become infatuated with “Josh.” And then she delivered the blow. “I don’t like the way you treat your friends,” Drew wrote. According to Megan’s father, “Josh”’s last e-mail to his daughter read, “You are a bad person and everybody hates you … The world would be a better place without you.”

The Meier case got massive play in the national media this past week, coming as it did on the heels of a major new survey showing that up to one in three children in the United States have been harassed or bullied online.

But for me the tragedy highlighted another troubling issue that threatens our homes just as steadily as poisonous online communications. That is the disturbing degree to which today’s parents – and mothers in particular – frequently lose themselves when they get caught up in trying to smooth out, or steamroll over, the social challenges faced by their children.

You only hear about the most freakish cases, like that of Lori Drew or of Wanda Webb Holloway, the Texas mother who in 1991 tried to pay someone to murder the mother of her daughter’s chief cheerleading rival. (“The motive here was love, a mother’s love for a daughter,” said a police investigator at the time.) Yet everyday examples abound of parents whose boundary issues are not so extreme, but still qualify as borderline wacko.

“People now feel like having a good relationship with your child means you’re involved in every aspect of your child’s life,” says Rosalind Wiseman, author of “Queen Bees & Wannabes” and “Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads,” who travels the country speaking with and counseling parents, teachers and teens. “Nothing is off-limits” now between parents and their kids, she says. “There’s no privacy and there’s no critical thinking.”

Wiseman has heard stories of parents who hope to pave their child’s way to popularity by luring the in-crowd to parties with promised “loot-bag” giveaways like iPods and North Face fleeces. She recently heard of a father who, happening on an instant-messaging war between his child and a bunch of children on a sleepover, went over to the other house, called the other father outside, and began a fistfight that ended only after someone called the police. And of a mother who, unwilling to join her fifth-grade daughter in accepting the apology of another fifth-grader who’d bullied her in the playground, hounded the school incessantly, pushing for the other child to be expelled.

Parents, she says, routinely blow a gasket when they get it in their heads that they need to seek revenge on their child’s behalf. “It’s, ‘I’ve been wronged. My kid has been wronged, so I’ve been wronged; therefore I have to do whatever’s necessary, including being disgustingly immoral.’ ”

“Where are the brakes,” Wiseman asked, “on parental behavior?”

Otherwise put: where does adult behavior end and childish behavior begin?

“Morally speaking, they shouldn’t have done that,” a 22-year-old writing on Yahoo! Answers this week observed about the Drew case. “But I don’t think they should be held responsible b/c kids are mean to each other every day. It would not be any different than an actual 13 yr old boy being mean to another girl.”

That, of course, is the whole point.

Parents of teenagers are not supposed to act like teenagers. They’re not supposed to dress like teenagers or talk like teenagers or spend their days text-messaging teenagers – as one mom Wiseman encountered did, exchanging expressions of shock and dismay, after her 14-year-old daughter broke up with a popular and athletic boy. (“I was totally basking in the social status I was getting from the boy,” the very honest mother told Wiseman.)

Or, at least, parents weren’t supposed to act like this in the past.

“There used to be this kind of parent-child gradient, where the parent was expected to – and did – function at a different level than the child,” says clinical psychologist Madeline Levine, author of the 2006 book “The Price of Privilege,” who lectures frequently on child and adolescent issues. Now, she says, “that whole notion of parents being in an entirely different space than their children is disappearing.”

In part, Levine blames parenting experts for this turn of events.

She blames the self-esteem movement, decades of parenting advice that prized “communication” over limit-setting and safety. She blames the narcissistic needs of parents who want their children to like them at all costs. And in part, when thinking over the fused mother-daughter dyads she so often encounters in therapy, she indicts this generation of mothers’ loneliness, dissatisfaction in work and marriage, stress, sense of failure, and emotional isolation. In the end, she asks, when you’re feeling alone and blue, “Who are you sure is going to hang around with you? It’s your children.”

It’s very easy to put up walls to separate the likes of Lori Drew and Wanda Webb Holloway from the rest of us. Most of us, after all, are not sick or profoundly vindictive, entirely lacking in self-awareness or devoid of all empathy.

Still, we have all caught ourselves spending a little too much time worrying about (or gloating over) our children’s popularity. We spend a lot of time feeling our children’s pain and put a lot of thought into shaping their world to offer them the greatest possible degree of happiness. But our kids really need something much bigger from us than that. They desperately need us to grow up.

from Judith Warner's blog: http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2007...-turns-deadly/

Kpax	12-05-2007 12:31 AM

Wow.........

First of all, I didn't know a young girl could do that to herself. I've heard of suicide over a boy, but hanging is extra-gruesome.

Lemme tell you as a typically lonely person some profiles on MySpace can do that to you. When I first started I had a crush on someone on my friend list, and I felt happier than I had in years. I guess it might've been under the assumption that she wouldn't accept my friend request unless it were really serious, like a matchmaking site. Lo and behold I would leave her a comment and be so nervous about the reply that I wouldn't log in for a week...

So, it's easy even for an adult to take that site seriously. Later when I became familiar with the MySpace culture and the whole "It's only the Internet" notion, I calmed down, but maybe just because I am an adult.

As far as the fake account in this story goes, well, fake accounts usually have a obviously fake, overly photogenic photo as the main one, and the profile usually doesn't have much personal information. If this fake profile is what I'm picturing, that's extra-tragic since it lead to all of this...

Leto	12-05-2007 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zipper

What are the rules for MYSPACE....you must be 14 to create an account. Her mother KNEW she was using MYSPACE...let's point more than one finger here. I see the PARENT just as responsible!

My pet peeve. I have 3 kids, the oldest is now 18, but they range in age from that down to 10.

For the past 10 years, since I first got highspeed access in the house, there has been constant vigilance and an ongoing struggle to enforce appropriate online usage. Both my wife and I have been IT professionals since the late '80's and while teethed on the mainframe world, the new technologies grew up around us and there's no way that any of the kids can pull the wool over our eyes with respect to computer usage at home.

This is not the case for our neighbours, or parents of our kid's friends. Everywhere they go, they have friends who not only have computer access to the internet IN THEIR BEDROOMS but also are not monitored for length of time, bed times or homework completion. It seems that the parents accept the statements that "they are working".

Early on I gave MSN access to my oldest, he was in grade 9, and he was working on homework in the basement. Well, I soon discovered that he typed a lot into MSN (75% of his effort went here) and hardly had any typing done on the Word document that was due in the morning. Immediately the plug (cat5e) was pulled on the basement computer, and he found himself working at the kitchen computer under our supervision. He also had to stay up past midnight until the work was completed.

Parenting is NOT easy. The decisions are hard, and following through and remaining consistant is hard. But this is what we signed on for, and technical sophistication is no excuse for reduced parental vigilence.

The very same neighbours have this "high " technology in their houses, yet, leave 10 year olds or 13 year olds alone to "play" with facebook, MSN or yahoo chat. I can hear the IM noises in the background when I pop over for what ever reason. She complains she can't control thier access to the computer as they always discover the password, yet there is not removal of access.

Video games & movies fall into this lazy parenting category as well. There is very little enforcement of age appropriate material and my kids constantly complain that we are too strict compared to everybody else.

Well, yes we are. And, both our 18 year old and 15 year old received 88% as their first term averages, so something is working. At least from the parenting aspect.

mixedmedia

12-05-2007 08:47 AM

Well, as a tip for all parents...

As the mother of two grown children I can tell you, there really isn't that much work for a child to do on a computer for homework on a regular, consistent basis. So if they're spending hours every evening on the computer and telling you that 'they're doing homework' they're lying.

n0nsensical

12-06-2007 12:05 AM

"The world would be a better place without you."

I suppose the mother doesn't realize the irony of this statement. What an awful example of a human being. And she reproduced? I weep for the future of humanity.

But suicide is one and only one person's choice, and who doesn't have to deal with this stuff as a kid?

Both parties are responsible. I hope the parents of the victim have their day in civil court. There's no excuse for that kind of behavior; she should have known better.

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