I spend a good deal of my day on Facebook, MySpace and Web blogs. They fill the unending hours of my incomplete and lazy summer days. They provide an easy way to stay attached to my friends without ever calling or interacting with them.
These online networking programs are about convenience and sucking your time away. Or is Tom, creator of MySpace and friend to all, really the ultimate tech pimp of sexual predators?
The threat generated by such programs is best conveyed through a series of gripping Dateline specials.
Parents thought they had just gotten across to their kids the dangers of AOL Instant Messenger and chatting online. But worries abound again with yet more programs that will lead to our untimely demise.
Dateline describes MySpace to the unknowing parents with cruelty: "It's a cyber secret teenagers keep from tech-challenged parents who are not as savvy as Margaret. It's a world where the kids next door can play any role they want."
It's almost laughable to us to think of these "dangers" and our tech-challenged parents struggling to understand our fun. Until that is, it happens to us.
Last semester, a student was released from the residential halls because there were pictures of him drinking in his room on Facebook.com.
Student Jason Johnson was expelled from a small Baptist university, the University of the Cumberlands, this year for admitting on MySpace that he was gay.
The Chicago Tribune reported this week that a 17-year-old student may face expulsion for criticizing his school's administration on a Web blog.
In a post on May 2, the student addressed his school's threats to take down his blog.
"I feel threatened by you, I can't even have a public Web page with out you bullying me and telling me what has to be removed. Did you ever stop to think this will start a community backlash?" he wrote.
He continued to explain that the students at Columbine High School "did what they did because they were bullied. In my opinion you are the real threat here. None of us ever put in our xanga's that they were going to kill or bring harm to any one. We voiced our opinions. You are depriving us of our right to learn."
And learn he will – even if it is just to keep his thoughts to himself at a different school. The student has been suspended for 10 days and awaits a hearing where Plainfield School District will decide whether or not he will be expelled.
It's obviously a thin line to distinguish between teenage angst and threats to other students' safety.
With recent events in my mind, I hope we all reexamine our own profiles and blogs before the Man brings us down.
I have cleverly adapted my own profile for this very reason.
On Facebook, my location is Tempizzle. A location that doesn't exist, yet shiznit's always happening. Cleverly, I also replaced my picture on MySpace with my World of Warcraft character's face to ward off the predators seeking hotties. Unfortunately, I never anticipated the overwhelming response I would receive from Night Elf enthusiasts.
You win some and lose some, but you may as well be careful.
Reach the reporter at anjali.patel@asu.edu.
