WoodyEdmiston

Another fraternity member

Cynthia Logan and I belong to a fraternity that no one wants to pledge.  It is a growing group of parents who have lost their children to internet stupidity.  Cynthia Logan lost her daughter Jessica to cyberbullying.

http://www.foxnews.com/video-search/m/22026064/tragic_death.htm

My heart goes out to the family.  Their tragedy is only made worse - to me - because I know that the government of this country has protected the people responsible for this blight with laws that hold them harmless.

Depending upon who writes history, our society will one day be written about and discussed with a clinical distance and a critical eye.   I predict those future historians will compare the Black Death of the Middle Ages to the beginnings of the internet age.

Another Child Gone

Megan Meier according to press accounts was a disturbed child who took medication.  That's not all that unusual these days, statistics show a high percentage of children to take some sort of medication to deal with the pressures of 21st Century adolescence.  In Megan's case other adolescents whose ideas seem to have been fueled by pure animal instincts, allowed free rein by poor parental control and influenced by the dog-eat-dog mentality of our current media culture, caused her death.  Yes, to put it plainly, caused her death. If a drill sergeant in the military did the same thing he would be up on charges.  She was teased, lied to and told the world would be a better place without her.

MySpace provided the platform for this death.  They continue to put a "toy" in the public domain that were it to come from China, still damp with it's poison based veneer, would be jerked off the market.
Social Networking promotes a materialistic life style, a life that is focused on seeking praise from other people and partying like you were Paris Hilton - and look where that has gotten her!  Social Networking teaches that it is important to ridicule your friends about their clothes if their idea of style does not fit yours.  Various television shows promote the same idea.  There is so much of a drive to conformity - conformity to chic clothes, bad hairstyles, poor taste in sexual partners and substance abuse - it is amazing that SNS is not X-rated.

Megan Meier is another victim  - on a list that is in the hundreds and growing larger every day - of the Social Networking phenomenon.

See the entire story at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21844203/?GT1=10547

Anoriexia and Social Networking

In my book, Why Parents Should Fear MySpace, I point out that social networking acts as a focal point for children to form opinions and choose life styles.  In an article in the Daily Mail (London) experts in the field of Anorexia Nervosa have asked MySpace to monitor the content of some sites that post pictures of ultra-thin girls.  A young lady interviewed about the photos said she considered the pictures "thinspiration."  Other went on to discuss using the pictures to help them fast for several days at a time.

Anorexia is a physcological disorder.  It is the psychological disorder with the highest mortality rate.  It's not a lifestyle choice, it is a choice to flirt with death.  Adolescence is a time when identity is formed in children.  When they visit sites like these they get ideas about their bodies from people who have a psychological disorder. 

Keep your kids close.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=474329&in_page_id=1879&ICO=FEMAIL&ICL=TOPART

Interesting Research

Danah Boyd of the Berkeley school of information recently shared her musings about social networking and the results were interesting.  She is a researcher who has done a lot of research about the goings on around the internet.  She's done interviews, field work and a lot of sociological type work that would bore most people - other than me - to death.  From a news article about her work I found this quote illuminating:

"The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes and other 'good' kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college . . . kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school."

The article continued "It's . . . for outsiders—burnouts, punks, emos, Goths and gangstas.  MySpace is most likely the site selected by Hispanic and immigrant teens."

Oh, brother!  If there is any better way for you to understand why your kid probably doesn't need to be on social networking in the first place this is it.  The "study" of who is on these site doesn't look at positives or negatives.  There is no discussion of what the users derive that this positive.  It is just another way to look at life and discover who is "in" and "out."  The last thing parents need is someone else teaching their kiddo about class and social climbing.

Read the article at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20010695/site/newsweek/page/0/

Fiddle about!

In the rock opera by The Who, Peter Townsend wrote a song called "Fiddle About" in which the drunken uncle of the storie's hero, Tommy, molests him while the parents are out of the home.  The actual lyric is " And I'm doing exactly what I bleedin' well want to, Fiddling about, fiddling about, fiddle about."  When I read stories about professionals and legislators "fiddling about" while children are injured it drives me to drink.  The recent story  of two "twenty-something" parents who were so addicted to online gaming that they failed to feed and care for their 11 and 22-month-old children offers an example of how professionals continue to fiddle when they should act.  In the story Michael and Iana Straw neglected their children because they were addicted to the online game "Dungeons and Dragons."  Investigators said that although there was food in the house; the parents would not stop playing the game long enough to feed and care for the children.  While most of us find a story like this horrendous, and ample evidence that online gaming can be dangerous, the professionals just don't seem to get it.  Legislators and professionals use criteria for the determination of whether danger exists that is far too scientific and based in proofs that allow far too many incidents to occur while they optimize their research. At some point we must take a look at the results in the real world and belay trying to figure out the exact reason why something works the way it does. We need to do something! In the story above from Fox (who owns MySpace, Google, and various other online distractions) they carefully mention that "experts" haven't convinced themselves that this is really a problem:

" Last month, experts at an American Medical Association meeting backed away from a proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder, saying it had to be studied further. Some said the issue is like alcoholism, while others said there was no concrete evidence it's a psychological disease.   [Computer Addiction however is a listed psychological disease.]

Patrick Killen, spokesman for Nevada Child Abuse Prevention, said video game addiction's correlation to child abuse is 'a new spin on an old problem.' "

Let's look at this from a real world point of view.    A year ago this month, Amsterdam opened the first detox center  for online video players.   It is an eight week program for players who realize that the games have taken over their lives.  Like alcoholics, there are a lot of folks who have not yet figured that out for themselves, therefore the true size of the cohort of addicted players is unknown.  China too has realized that this is a problem and opened clinics to treat internet addiction in over 1500 patients since 2004.  The Chinese Government evidently does not have as many experts to slow things down.  Perhaps they were stirred into action because of stories like the one of Korean Parents letting their child die from suffocation while they played a video game. China recently took steps to limit the amount of time a person can play online.  Showing an understanding of what motivates players, they told Internet Providers that they must cut online credits by half when users go over three hours per day.   I don't find that any more intrusive by my government than a 70 mph speed limit. This may be the only time in my life that I have taken the stand that a Communist government had a better idea the the U.S.A.

Meanwhile the pointy heads who think they are so much smarter than parents continue to defend video games. Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica says that nothing would have been said if the aforementioned Korean parents had gone to a ball game.  That, of course is not true, leaving an infant alone for any amount of time is a crime in most states of the United States.  A better analogy would be if the family dog attacked and killed a child. If that happened we would dispose of the dog.  In spite of the fact that: most dogs don't kill their owner's children; he was just doing what animals do; and if he were better watched by his owners the dog would never do it again - we kill the dog.  There are no second chances.  The gamers want to say:  "Hey, it's not the game, it's not the internet, it's the parent's fault."  In spite of repeated examples of how gaming and computer addiction is hurting our kids they refuse to take the same hard line as we take with the offending animal.  I feel the same way about video games, social networking, and the internet in general.  Having them in your house with a child of any age is the same as having an animal in your house that once attacked a child.  You can't give that dog to your uncle who has a farm.  The liability of owning a dog of that sort is to great - even if local law would allow it. (It doesn't) Each of them, video games, social networking, and the internet, has caused harm in the past and will do it again.  But . . . and you may not know this . . . the purveyors of MySpace and similar companies covered by the Comunications Decency Act are specifically protected from liability.  Their dog can just keep on biting - and they have immunity.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/20/news_6127866.html
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2005/6/21/547 Ben Kuchera Ars Technica
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/03/health/webmd/main1773956.shtml
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/12/business/addicts.php
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUST29847420070409

An Interesting Twist on Social Networking Crime

In WPSFMS I have made the point that social networking is often used to plan crimes.  In the story linked here the editors use the term "grooming."  This may be a term you are not familiar with unless you are a therapist or a member of law enforcement.  Grooming is a term to describe a wide variety of manipulative activities used by predators on and off the internet.  It is preparatory behavior intended to produce a desired future effect.  A lawyer might groom his junior partner or son to take over the law firm at some time in the future.  The difference here is that the sexual predator is breaking down any resistance to a future sexual encounter.  In WPSFMS (my book) I describe a simple joke that is circulated on the internet.  It describes in detail what could be either a first sexual encounter between an older person and a virginal partner - or - the first time a person has a tooth extracted.  Posting this story on a social networking site by an older person with an intent to either reduce the resistance or arouse the curiosity of a younger child amounts to grooming en masse.  It's also a bit like trolling the oceans in hopes of getting a fish, any fish, to bite.  Predators are patient.  In the case mentioned above the predator seeks to manipulate the natural desire to belong to special groups.  He created a special society for teens to join.  He demanded naked photos of young girls who wanted membership.  Providing the photos was a step toward meeting him and engaging in sex.  He explained that he did not like the rules of society so he had decided to start his own society.  It was an attempt to create an imaginary world inside the social networking community.  The story is just one more example of how imaginative the people who use social networking have become and the variety of danger that exists for the unaware.

Keep your kids close.

MySpace can be used for criminal enterprise

Here is another bit of news that indicates social networking sites can be used to further the interests of crime.  I have made the point in the past that shooters like Kimveer Gill and Virginia Tech's Cho are formulating ideas and getting support from like minded people to plan and execute their madness.  In the Boston area the gang banger's have gotten in on the action.  In the story law enforcement found a site for a gang where they  " . . .recruited new members over the Internet to terrorize the community with beatings, stabbings, and shootings . . ." 

The U.S. Attorney, Michael Sullivan, investigating the case said: "It is just another reminder obviously to all of us as parents to make sure we are monitoring where our kids are going, in terms of the Internet,"

It is becoming more obvious to me that I need to do another edition of my book to include more information on how parents can protect themselves and their children.

Keep your kids close.

Keep your kids close

Someone called me after reading the blog on the 11 year old girl in Pawtucket and opined: "How can we keep our kids close if they are on the other end of the couch but in another world."  And that is a good question.  The whole reason I wrote was to inform parents.  You can't know about the effects of social networking if you don't know it's there.  Once you do and you set out to protect your child - here are a few things you can do:

1. Add software to your child's computer like the ones I have linked on the side of this blog. (Spectorsoft & Integrity)
2. Tell them you have added the software - afterwards.  I would suggest that you do it about two weeks later after you have a chance to see what they are doing and where they have been going.   This will give you an idea of just how closely you need to watch.
3. One of the tell-tale signs that you should worry about is if they suddenly close the site or shutdown the page they are on when you get close enough to see the screen.  Take that as an indicator that you really need tracking software on their computer.
4. So what if you find out they are goofing around in adult matters or places that are inappropriate?  Does it mean they are "bad seed?"  No!  It just means your job as a parent isn't over.  Regardless how much they protest, teens really do want constructive help from adults.  Be prepared to give them reasons why some sites are not safe, some people are not safe, some things - like porn - once you have seen it can't be erased; and that changes who they are.   This is one of the reasons I suggest looking into their doings for a week or more before you tell them you have added the software.  It gives you time to think through what you have seen, talk to experts if you need to and approach them rationally.  It will help you keep the discussion from becoming an argument.
5. Keep a good relationship with your child.  Don't let adolescence become a time of battle.  They are becoming a new person with ideas of their own.  There are several good texts on keeping this relationship alive.  James Dobsons books are some of the best.

More to come. Keep your kids close.

My Children are not old enough yet

Often I meet people at book signings or meetings where concerned parents are talking about their children.  One of the frequent comments about my book, WPSFMS is, "My kids are not that old yet."  I'm linking here http://www.pawtuckettimes.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18465589&BRD=1713&PAG=461&dept_id=24491&rfi=6 an article about an 11 year old girl whose innocence has been taken by a 21 year old man.  The prime objective for my writing WPSFMS is to alert parents to the fact that a social networking site is a "private place" inside their home.  Just because Suzy is sitting on the other end of the couch from you does not mean she is mentally in the same room with you.  If she is using a laptop or sitting across the room on the family computer - she may be in another world.  It is a world where you are unwelcome.  The denizens of this world are looking for kids whose parents are not watching.  They can be harmed both physically and mentally in the process of dabbling in a world where you never truly know who you are talking to.

Keep your kids close.

Hooray for MySpace

Hooray for MySpace! They have been cooperating with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.  General Abbott is a fine man who I campaigned with in the 2000 election cycle in Travis County.  I am pleased that he is taking a look at predators on social networking.  See the whole story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070614/wr_nm/myspace_texas_dc_1