Re: Net and photos, names, etc.
Bruce E. Cobern (bec@PIPELINE.COM)
Mon, 28 Dec 1998 22:42:31 -0500
At 10:23 PM 12/28/98 -0500, Cheryl Singhal wrote:
>I see your point, in a way, and in a way, I even agree. However, the
>'net offers a child a (false) sense of separation -- "hey, he can't find
>me, it's not like talking to someone Mom knows." There are some pretty
>odd-ball news stories out there Remember the one this past summer where
>the California boy sneaked out of his home to the Greyhound station where
>he picked up a pre-paid ticket to DC, where he was met by an e-mail buddy
>-- the parents were frantic and for what, two weeks? didn't know where
>he was. Or maybe 18 months ago, some dingbat over toward Baltimore
>cooked up an idiot scheme with her e-buddy -- she went down to meet him
>KNOWING he was going to kill her, she even left her husband a note
>saying they had planned it all out and that the e-buddy shouldn't be
>prosecuted. Then there was the one where two teeny-boppers went to a
>woods to meet an e-buddy, because he knew their pets' names, or
>the one where the girl hitchhiked to another state to get back some
>e-mail she'd sent ...
Except that in ALL of these cases, had the victims been taught the 3R's -
recognize, resist and report - they would not have happened. These all
involved naive people who had not been prepared to deal with the possible
results of their online activity. I think a far more worthwhile method of
dealing with this is for parents to be extremely conscious of what their
children are doing online, teach their children NOT to interact in person
with people they've met on the net, and, once again, make sure they know how
to recognize, resist and report.
I realize that in the case of info on a web page there is not necessarily
any previous contact with the child, but then that just makes the initial
approach no different than that of any other stranger who has "located" the
child by any other means.
--
Bruce E. Cobern
mailto:bec@pipeline.com
