Yet another reason to keep your kids off myspace

Perhaps it's not that people are saying the internet or myspace caused a molestation, but perhaps myspace facilitated it through negligence or inaction. The catholic church didn't cause priests to molest alterboys, but it didn't prevent it in many cases. A store doesn't cause a customer to fall on a ice-covered sidewalk, but it might not have prevented it from happening by shoveling the snow. Ford didn't cause Pintos to explode, but it didn't prevent that from happening until after it's design was found to be dangerous. And schools didn't cause a gang of second graders to sexually assault a classmate in St. Louis, but the lack of supervision is one factor that led to it actually happening.

And, with places such as myspace, cause isn't the issue. It's a good effort at prevention, or a lack thereof, that will be the lucrative aspect of this stuff.

 

AOL has 21 percent of the ISP market. No. 2, Comcast, has 9.2 percent.

I doubt it's just for kids.

 

The AOL chat rooms are weird to me. I remember having AOL in the 90s for a week trial.

I was fixing up my yard and entered a "chat room" about gardening.

Soon the discussion lead to sex.

Gardening, folks, gardening.

 

To be fair, both can involve hoes.

 

It's not going to be much different on the yahoo chat rooms, the msn rooms, or anywhere else. methinks they're all loaded with people that really need to go outside and experience sunlight and carbon-based human interaction once in a while.

/scurrying away from SportsJournalists.com to cover a track meet. ttfn

 

Get your firm butt cheeks out of here, Idaho.

 

What should myspace be doing to prevent this sort of thing? And what really could be done, practically?

And why isn't this seen more broadly as a parenting issue? I'm not arguing parents need to be/should be monitoring their kids' computer usage 24/7, but if a 13-year-old thinks meeting up with the 20-something stranger something's obviously gone seriously wrong at home.

 

Lugnuts, that is what AOL is. It just hasn't changed.

Being as Comcast isn't available in every market, an honest assessment would be cable modem versus AOL. However, there is the AOL overlay that runs on high speed.

And it changes nothing. AOL is not for adults. It makes no sense to run it if you are one.

 

You are correct. You will be just fine. However, you aren't the only one in the room. Like Lugnuts pointed out with the gardening discussion. Eventually it just goes in a direction that is very very odd.

Now, while there are a lot of people in there that need to get out more, I won't say all.

 

Good one.

 

The best thing I can do is try to provide the best example for my little man. I was raised around and by women, so I have always demonstrated a much deeper respect for women than a lot of other men. I try to be gentle, polite and respectful and, even at 3, I try to get him to do the same.

 

Are you sure you're a man?