Kiddies and the Interweb

A few class periods ago, we watched "Growing Up Online" and it really got me thinking that kids today think they know everything, but they don't. My parents always told me that when I was growing up and I'll be honest, I thought they were full of crap. But sitting here in front of the computer today as a 22 year old, I can now see my parents are a lot wiser than I thought they were.

I discovered the internet when I was about 12 years old. I would get bored and go into chat rooms with aliases I created and talked to random "cute" boys from all over the country. Back then there was no Myspace or Facebook but there was a site called AsianAvenue (the old school Asian version of Myspace) that I had a personal web page on. But I was one of the "smart" kids. I didn't put my whole name or where I was from on it so there's no way anyone can stalk me... right?

Well maybe I got lucky. But some teens aren't...


(found in Google image search)
I came across this article linked in Yahoo! News: Jury to Hear About Suicide in MySpace Cyber-Hoax Trial. In a nutshell, it's about a 13 year old girl who met a "cute 16 year old boy" (who was actually a woman posing as a boy) on Myspace and exchanged messages with "him" back and forth. In the end, the "boy" told the 13 year old girl that the world was better off without her. The girl reacted to this by hanging herself.

Reading articles like this makes me sad. Because kids today grow up with the internet, they think everything they find is real. They are so so so naive. They think they know everything... but they really don't. Parents really do have a reason to worry, and the 13 year old girl's suicide justifies that fear. Things really do happen sometimes; it could happen to anyone.

So for all the kiddies out there, be careful. Just be careful because you never know who you can trust on the interweb.