A few stupid kids are doing stupid things with MySpace.com, and now they're starting to write stories with headlines like this one from the Detroit Free Press: "Dearborn Threat Shows Blog Danger." Apparently, two dweebs at Dearborn High School decided to make some threats about shooting the school up. Which is pretty disturbing, because the school's principal is the mother of a good friend of mine. But anyway, things like this are starting to percolate a little hysteria movement about how "dangerous" blogs are because a few stupod kids have gone and done stupid things like posting fake (or real) threats, or posting too much information about themselves that leads to them being victimized.
MySpace is not exactly a "blog" per se. I finally broke down and signed up for a MySpace page (here, if you're curious) out of curiousity. For some reason it has become pretty popular, despite the somewhat garish web design, and the total lack of server capacity to handle busy traffic. But I admit that there is a sort of novelty to seeing which of your friends and acquaintances can be found there, and it has become quite popular with the kids. And like most things that kids do, parents don't quite understand it, so the first time a couple of people do something bad/stupid with it, they panic, and news stories like the one in the Free Press get written about how "dangerous" it is.
One parent said "kids put stuff on the Internet without thinking it through." While this is true, a lot of people put stuff on the Internet without thinking it through (some would say this blog is a perfect example). I'm not sure that makes the Internet dangerous. I'm also not sure that this makes MySpace the culprit. MySpace doesn't raise the kind of kids who would threaten their fellow students, or fail to keep tabs on them so that they are able to post those threats (indeed, were it not for MySpace and the stupidity of these kids, the folks at Dearborn High might not have found out about this until it was too late).
So maybe it's not the blogs that are dangerous for kids, but rather, the lack of parental involvement.
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