Hey Dan

When I was 18 I did a dumb thing. I drove to Southerland a town about 30 min from my home at the time to meet a girl. I talked to the girl about a dozen times on the phone, but we had never met before. She had said she saw me out cruising one night and asked a friend for my name. My phone number was listed and she called me. As it turned out, she was 14 not 19 and had just picked my name out of the phone book. The whole thing sounded funky. The good news is I had brought an adult chaperon. The whole farce ended when her father answered the door. It was dumb. The number of things that could have happened is serious.

I tell you this story to make a point. We did not have to have the Internet for kids to do dumb things. The stories about MySpace, LiveJournal and other social networks being place from predators to hunt kids forget this is note about technology. It is not blogs and LiveJournals that create the opportunity. It is lack of judgment. Teach your children to use theirs.

“The campaign to crowd out predators from MySpace.com is gathering steam in Washington. House of Representatives lawmakers proposed a bill on May 9 that would block access to social networks and Internet chat rooms in most federally funded schools and libraries.” ~ Halperin for BusinessWeek Online in New York

Now first, as far as a ‘campaign to crowd out predators from MySpace.com’ goes, what about the bill does that?

The problem is that the bill is so vague that any sites where users post there own content counts as a social network. Blogs, LiveJournals, wiki, you name it. Congress is so ignorant of how to handle tech issues they tend to side with the side with the most money. That side in this case is media companies and ‘family groups.’

The Internet is not a bad place full of unseen predators. It is your local mall. In fact it is everyone’s local mall. It is a safe place as long as you do not talk to strangers and you use your judgment. Trust me, I was a kid once. You can not parent lock me out of danger. However, if you teach me to use my judgment and trust me, I will talk to you when something sounds funky.