The tragedy of Megan Meier will take another twist Wednesday night when officials in her home town vote on whether to make online harassment a local crime.
Meier is the 13-year-old suburban St. Louis girl who met a cute 16-year-old named Josh Evans last year on the social networking site MySpace. They became close, but suddenly he turned on her, calling her names, saying she was “a bad person and everybody hates you.” Others joined the harassment ”” the barrage culminated in Megan’s Oct. 16, 2006, suicide, just short of her 14th birthday.
Weeks later, Megan’s grieving parents learned that the boy didn’t exist ”” he’d been fabricated by a neighbor, the mother of one of Megan’s former friends. The girls had had a falling out, police say, and she wanted to know what Megan was saying about her daughter.
(1) You’ve got to supervise your kids’ Internet usage, just like who they hang out with and where they go physically.
(2) There was an adult woman involved in this scam. It’s bad enough that teenagers toyed with this depressed girl. A MOTHER was in on it too. Unbelievable.
No, not unbelievable. The very reverse. Welcome to Myspace and Youtube and whatall, where America can speak freely, do what it wishes and use anonymity and electronic manipulation for the benefit off all. And think what a benefit these sites are for the young! How can we find words of praise strong enough for the personal benefits of the internet? Let me count the ways.
How can Americans be gulled so completely by the virtual world?
Larry
[blockquote]The paper didn’t identify the neighbor, and police say she committed no crime, but bloggers who see it differently have outed and humiliated the family online.[/blockquote]
. . . thereby perpetuating the same kind of harassment of which the neighbor (whose purported actions I am [b]not[/b] defending) is being accused.
A point of information: The Post-Dispatch has identified the neighbor as Lori Drew. Personally, I see no problem in shunning and ostracizing these people for what they did.
DeeBee, the bloggers have identified the woman who did this. This is different from inventing a person and luring a girl to make contact with the invented person online, then humiliating her by having the fake guy dump her. It’s not the same at all. If the bloggers are inciting criminal conduct against the woman (“Let’s go burn her house down!” or “Somebody should go beat her to a pulp!”) then that’s harassment.
Here’s a simple truth: People who use Youtube and FaceBook deserve what they get. These sites are trouble waiting to be invited into your home. Simple: Keep them out. Will your children be allowed to use them? Try Absolutely Not, for an answer. Using Youtube is like picking up hitchhikers nowadays. Do it at your own risk. LM
Larry, I disagree. In my work at the Library, I have attended many workshops on “library 2.0” — the digital age. In almost all of these, the positive sides of MySpace, YouTube, SecondLife etc. are extolled as a fertile field for the presence of Youth Librarians and on-line reference services, etc. (eg., online teen book clubs).
Yes, there are negatives, but how much of the press extolls the negative over the positive in ANY arena? As Joseph Pullitzer once said “Good news does NOT sell papers!”.
Katherine uncovered the secret: Parents need to monitor their children’s internet usage the same as they do TV and Video Games. Our library doesn’t even allow children under 13 to be in the library unaccompanied. Some parents are too trusting in their children’s ‘sense of responsibility’ — they are not miniture adults, they are CHILDREN, and need more guidance and supervision than many parents are willing to give.
Peace!
Jim Elliott <><
By the way, the neighbor’s mother needs to be prosecuted under some kind of hate crimes action. It reminds me of that movie from a few years back:
The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom
based on a true story.
Mus t disagree LibJ. FAcebook and the like arre breeding grounds for our modern form of rampant egocentrism, and for the exhibitionism that has popison our culture since the 60’s. And perhaps even more important, these sites intensify an already bad social culture that has substituted virtual contacts with a face-to-face contact. In the process it has created a willingness trust where in obvious fact, none should be granted, and in THAT process has encouraged the young to avoid making those critical social observations of real people from which alone can arise genuine trust. Larry