“The Internet is becoming the town square
for the global village of tomorrow.”
Bill Gates
“Few influential people involved with the Internet
claim that it is a good in and of itself. It is a powerful
tool for solving social problems, just as it is a tool
for making money, finding lost relatives,
receiving medical advice, or, come to that,
trading instructions for making bombs.”
Esther Dyson
“On the Internet, inside information is currency,
and there will always be counterfeiters among us.”
J. Michael Straczynski
The Internet began as a tool that enabled academics and government workers to communicate with each other quickly and effectively. While Al Gore may not have actually invented the Internet, he was influential in expanding the system to be used by the American public and, ultimately, the entire world.
That being said, the Internet is a tool. Like all tools, it can be used for good or for evil. A knife can slice a red, ripe, juicy tomato that nourishes a child or it can be used in a moment of violence to destroy a life. In the same way that we all have knives in our kitchens, most of us have the Internet in our homes. At the end of the day, it is our responsibility to manage these tools effectively so that they have a positive impact our children.
For many years in the late 1980’s, my husband and I lived in virtual isolation. I was unable to leave my home because my oldest son had been injured at birth and was medically fragile to the point where a simple cold could have escalated quickly and killed him. We made the choice to do everything we could to avoid contact with germs. The Internet was in its infancy, but it enabled me to have a remarkable sense of freedom and communication. From my home office in Los Angeles, I taught the first university accredited course in screenwriting via distance learning; I spoke to dozens of other screenwriters every day on the Writers Guild BBS; I could even read my home town paper (The New York Times) on the same day it was printed! All of these things enriched my life and expanded my opportunities.
The Internet is a tool of empowerment for those of us who are positively directed. At the same time, we know all too well that it can serve as a cyberspace cesspool for pedophiles, con artists and thieves. Articles in this section will shine a light on the wonderful opportunities that can be found online and post warning signs about the soft shoulders, slippery roads and falling rocks on the information superhighway.
The MySpace Case: Do Mean Girls Ever Grow Up?
May 16th 2008
In one way or another, at some point in our wonder years we all had to deal with the mean girls. They were conceited – “stuck up” – and thought they were better than we were. They made fun of how we dressed or how we ran in phys ed, or just about anything else in our lives that presented itself as an opportunity for their mockery. When they discovered that we liked a boy, they were the first one to tell him – and to mock him, too, if he didn’t react like he thought it was gross – thereby sabotaging our chances with Prince Charming and getting another laugh at our expense. They traveled in packs, bonding over our anguish. But being a mean girl didn’t guarantee that another mean girl wouldn’t make you her target – in fact, some of the meanest girls welcomed the challenge of a more evenly-matched victim.
Through it all, a painful reality perpetuates the cycle of girl-on-girl bullying. Anyone who willfully (and, in this case, gleefully) inflicts pain on another is acting from a point of pain in their own life. At the very core, a mean girl’s pain is wrapped in anger. Unable to fight back or control the cause of her own anger, the mean girl strikes out at a victim that cannot return the aggression. It’s a simple act of psychological transference, yet it leaves an immeasurable amount of anguish in its wake.
Most of us grew up and moved on. Some of the mean girls found redemption and changed their ways. Some just disappeared – left town or transferred to another school, never to be heard from again. But some of them grew up to become mean women, their core of pain wrapped in anger now grown to extreme proportions. When they get married and have children of their own, some of them perpetuate the cycle of meanness against their own daughters, while others enlist their offspring as partners in crime.
This week, Lori Drew – a 49-year-old mother in Missouri – was indicted in Federal court in Los Angeles, charged with “conspiracy and accessing protected computers without authorization.” After setting up a phony myspace page under the false identity of a boy named Josh Evans, Lori, her 13-year-old daughter and her adult employee took turns using that false persona to befriend, seduce and ultimately belittle Megan Meier, an emotionally vulnerable girl who had just emerged from tween to teen. It was such a middle school mean girl thing to do – pure, classic vengeance. We can only imagine the fun that was had by these three generations of mean girls as they sat around the screen, laughing at Megan’s innermost thoughts while devising the most manipulative response to her, through Josh. What a bonding experience that must have been – mother to daughter, daughter to mother, employee to boss, etc.
When Josh’s final message suggested that “the world would be a better place without you,” Megan became so distraught that suicide seemed like the only way to stop the pain. Shortly after the final post from Josh, Megan hanged herself in the perfectly pink room that was no longer enough of a cocoon to shelter her from the pain of the mean, outside world.
Whether it was intentional or not, Lori Drew embedded a clue into the messages, but not one that a 13 year old girl could be expected to readily pick up. According to The Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton University (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/ ) the name “Josh” can be a play on words:
Verb
- S: (v) kid, chaff, jolly, josh, banter (be silly or tease one another) "After we relaxed, we just kidded around"
The mean girls were just “joshing” around with Megan – just playing a joke on her to get even for a schoolgirl disagreement she’d had with Lori Drew’s daughter. But the mean girl deck was so stacked against Megan that the final “josh” was more devastating than a little girl could imagine recovering from – and so the mean, unfunny practical joke ended with a deadly punch line.
If convicted, Lori Drew faces 20 years in prison. Federal sentences are hard time – no allowance for good behavior or time served – which means that Drew might be released around the time that Megan (and Drew’s own daughter) would have celebrated a 35th birthday. No matter how much time Lori Drew spends in jail, It won’t bring Megan back – and it certainly won’t help Drew’s own daughter get through the rest of her life, wearing this experience like a kick-me sign on her back. In so many ways, the ultimate victim of Lori Drew’s disgusting mean girl joke is her own daughter.
We can only wonder how many more false myspace identities have been created for heinous reasons. Perhaps we moms should all sign up for myspace pages – clearly under our own names and identities, of course – and start checking out our kid’s pages and their friend’s pages. Invite your kids and their friends to become your myspace friends. It’s a less-than-subtle way to let them know that you’re watching them and watching out for them.
It is admirable that myspace has taken the initiative to pursue prosecution in Federal Court, but it should also be noted that News Corp (owner of myspace) is doing what corporations do in situations like this – they are protecting the value of their brand. In spite of this tragedy, myspace knows that millions of its users are children under the age of 16. While there is a disclaimer, myspace does not shut down users who list middle schools in their profiles. In fact, myspace enables middle school children to participate by allowing them to list their age as “99” and making their photo gallery and other information “private” after the profile page. Nevertheless, sexual and emotional predators have a golden opportunity by approaching young children through a false profile. When one of them knocks with an invitation to become a friend, will your child let them into their “private” space?
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