Our country is shaken up today and trying to find answers, one day after the horrifying shooting at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC by a racist, anti-semitic extremist, killing an innocent security guard named Stephen Johns, and it happened not two weeks after another crazy extremist gunned down Kansas abortion provider George Tiller.

Naturally, we have everyone talking about the problems in our society with bigotry and hate crimes, with the fear of more domestic terrorism from crazy extremists. With it comes another question. How do these people get so hateful?

While I of course do not have a definite answer on that, there is a rather large portion of the population that can very easily be made to learn only hate and denied any access to information contrary to the hate. Those people are children and teens.

Because “everyone knows” that it is a parent’s job to instill values into their children, that parents have a “right” to raise their children however they see fit, it is believed that parents have the “right” to decide what information and media their children receive. It’s a common fall-back our free speech allies use against video game restrictions and library censorship, that it should be the parents and not the government or any other non-parent entity who decides what children read, play, etc. In that particular no-win this-or-that, whether parents or the government should be deciding what kids should be reading or playing, obviously the parents is the option to go with, but it’s really annoying that to so many these are the only two options, completely ignoring the rather important third option of “neither”, that the kids themselves should be the only ones to make that decision. (more…)

I’m going to ask a question that is often asked in regards to issues with youth: where are the parents? Of course, this question is always asked with very different meanings.

Just today, two sources have inspired me to ask this question. The first was this blog post by a feminist blogger I’ve been following on Twitter. It contains accounts of how she as well as some of her commenters have suffered sexual abuse in the past (unwanted activity ranging from touching of breasts, grinding, all the way up to full on rape), that which for varying reasons they did not even recognize as abuse right away. They still felt very violated, of course, but were pressured into keeping their mouths shut, that it wasn’t a big deal and they shouldn’t be making a big thing of it. Which served only to shame them more, causing them to remain quiet and more ashamed when abuses got more severe, even in cases of rape. And in most of these cases, they were around 14 years old, give or take a couple years.

Very saddened by these horrible stories, I asked myself why they didn’t realize what was happening was truly wrong, that they had every right and reason to feel violated and expect the perpetrator to be punished for treating them inappropriately. Of course, this question was answered right there in that entry, as well as several others this blogger has written on the subject. The victims felt immobilized because of shame, as mentioned already, as well as fear that if they made it known they felt abused they would be subject to worse abuse. So we’re left with them having to suffer in silence.

(more…)

There is so much wrong with this story, I hardly know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with a brief synopsis:

Megan Meier thought she had made a new friend in cyberspace when a cute teenage boy named Josh contacted her on MySpace and began exchanging messages with her.

Megan, a 13-year-old who suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder, corresponded with Josh for more than a month before he abruptly ended their friendship, telling her he had heard she was cruel.

The next day Megan committed suicide. Her family learned later that Josh never actually existed; he was created by members of a neighborhood family that included a former friend of Megan’s.

Now Megan’s parents hope the people who made the fraudulent profile on the social networking Web site will be prosecuted, and they are seeking legal changes to safeguard children on the Internet.

At first glance I figured this was one of your standard first amendment issues, where something horribly tragic happens and a grieving mother figures censoring the Internet is the best way to stop this from happening in the future. The canned response is that there is nothing special about the Internet that allows this to happen. People can succumb to hoaxes, teasing, and bullying through all communications mediums and I’m sure this isn’t the first girl in recorded history to kill herself over a broken heart (real or imagined). So censoring the Internet wouldn’t stop tragedies like this from happening in the future and would restrict the safe, lawful use of the Internet by the vast majority of users.

But that is such an expected response I get bored in saying it and probably wouldn’t bother to write up a blog entry for a matter that obvious. Then I read on.

Megan’s parents said she received a message from him on Oct. 15 of last year, essentially saying he didn’t want to be her friend anymore, that he had heard she wasn’t nice to her friends.

The next day, as Megan’s mother headed out the door to take another daughter to the orthodontist, she knew Megan was upset about Internet messages. She asked Megan to log off. Users on MySpace must be at least 14, though Megan was not when she opened her account. A MySpace spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Someone using Josh’s account was sending cruel messages. Then, Megan called her mother, saying electronic bulletins were being posted about her, saying things like, “Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat.”

Megan’s mother, who monitored her daughter’s online communications, returned home and said she was shocked at the vulgar language her own daughter was sending. She told her daughter how upset she was about it.

Megan ran upstairs, and her father, Ron, tried to tell her everything would be fine. About 20 minutes later, she was found in her bedroom. She died the next day.

Whoa. First of all, as established earlier in the article Megan had struggled with depression and was on medication. So now, she is extremely upset over things being said about her online, and calls her mother for support, help, and comfort, but instead of providing that her mother yells at her for using inappropriate language? What the hell is wrong with this mother? I wish I was more shocked than I am, but I can picture this reaction from quite a lot of parents out there.

If she cares about her daughter’s well-being, why wouldn’t she seek to comfort her when she is going through this kind of turmoil? Especially when she has a history of depression. If the girl was feeling alone, depressed and had a poor image of herself (because of the things “Josh” was saying) yelling at her and making her feel worse about herself is the single dumbest response I can think of. Especially if she is turning to you for support and comfort.

Then Megan turns to her father for help, and while the article doesn’t go into it too much (no doubt the father isn’t going to admit to the entirety of what he said to his daughter), it sounds like he was dismissive of her. She hung herself less than 20 minutes later. I haven’t heard of a clearer cry for help and a clearer failure to provide that help to someone who is hurting. 20 minutes later. She went to her mom and got yelled at, she went to her dad and got dismissed, and then immediately went to kill herself. Fucking hell, this isn’t the fault of MySpace or of the Internet, if you are going to charge someone, charge her parents for neglect. I’m appalled.

Furthermore, if the mother monitors her daughter’s online communications, she should have known how seriously Megan regarded this “Josh” character and would have understood her devastation at having him turn on her like that. The reason parents give to spy on their kids’ online activity is to protect them. What on earth are you protecting your daughter from if you don’t spot something like this? While I certainly don’t support monitoring anyone’s online activity, this was clearly a case where doing so could have helped save a life. But her mother failed at that too. I guess all she cared about was whether her daughter was using bad language. Great job mom, way to look out for your daughter. Once again, an over-protective parent fails utterly at protecting kids from true dangers and just causes grief over insignificant things like language.
But wait, this story gets more horrific:

Her father said he found a message the next day from Josh, which he said law enforcement authorities have not been able to retrieve. It told the girl she was a bad person and the world would be better without her, he has said.

Another parent, who learned of the MySpace account from her own daughter who had access to the Josh profile, told Megan’s parents about the hoax in a counselor’s office about six weeks after Megan died.

That’s when they learned Josh was imaginary, they said.

The woman who created the fake profile has not been charged with a crime. She allegedly told the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department she created Josh’s profile because she wanted to gain Megan’s confidence to know what Megan was saying about her own child online.

The mother from down the street told police that she, her daughter and another person all typed and monitored the communication between the fictitious boy and Megan.

Whoa again. This “Josh” who drove this poor girl to suicide was entirely made up. And made up by… (wait for it)….. an over-protective parent seeking to “protect” her daughter from the dangers of the Internet.

Let that sink in.

So two 13-year-old girls were being… 13-year-old girls and got into a bit of a spat. Instead of just letting them resolve things on their own, or handling things like adults the mother decides to be sneaky and spy not just on her own daughter, but the neighbor’s daughter as well.

I’m near speechless.

So either the mother learned all she needed to, and gathered all the dirt she wanted to on Megan, and decided to end it abruptly (and hurtfully) or the daughter, having this perfect window of opportunity presented to her by her mother decided to exact her revenge by hurting Megan by breaking off the imaginary relationship. Even if this hadn’t resulted in suicide, manipulating the emotions of Megan like this was such a cruel thing to do. More proof that catty, cruel, manipulative 13-year-old girls grow up to be catty, cruel, manipulative mothers. Or maybe it could be better said that catty, cruel, manipulative mothers raise their daughters to be catty, cruel, manipulative 13-year-olds.

Of course, catty, cruel, manipulative people of all ages (and genders) existed long before the Internet or MySpace. These two girls lived down the street from each other, so this was a real life feud that was just continued online. Nothing special about the Internet created or fostered this messed up situation. The one thing that did make the situation worse were two cruel, over-protective mothers.

Parents: leave your kids alone. Unless they come to you for help, then fucking help them, don’t yell at them. Both sets of parents should be brought up on charges and blamed for this tragedy. Not the fucking Internet.

Katrina is exactly right, people seek to protect youth for their own good, but it only exposes them to more danger. Instead of creating a fake profile to manipulate and spy on Megan, the other girl’s mom should have given her daughter some advice for dealing with the feud in a mature, reasonable way. Ya know, helped her by better preparing her to handle situations like this herself.

Instead she decided to set an excellent example for her daughter by being a catty, cruel, manipulative bitch and now we have one dead 13-year-old victim to show for it.