The pitfalls of social media

You should let it go, instead of dragging me into it. These have not been your finest moments on this board.

Are your kids still wearing burkas, and not allowed to do the normal activities all of their teenage friends partake in, such as having a facebook page?

I hope you don't let them go to the mall, because they are much more vulnerable to sexual predators out in public (no, I am not wishing that on them; just think you have come off as a raving paranoid every time this comes up), than they are because they have a facebook page (it's virtually nonexistent, given how many teens have social media pages)--something just about every kid does have, which you deemed horrible for teenagers and then went on a raving tear about (and proceed to invoke me every time it comes up). The prevalence of your kids falling victim of sexual predators due to social media is not very high relative to kids falling victim to bad things via actual real life interactions with adults (and even there the incidence is overstated, because it makes sensational Dateline episodes).

You muddled everything online with social media last time around without any coherent line of thought. You made no distinction between a chat room and Myspace, for example. And you blamed Alison Stokely on that first thread for the harassment she received because of how she looked (she was a high school champion high jumper), because you said she brought it on herself by having a Myspace page, when in fact, the page that led to the mess was set up by others -- using photos of her competing in High School track and field events. It was shameful, even though you did it inadvertently before knowing facts -- blaming the girl for others' harassing her (she didn't set up a Myspace page; she was guilty of competing in high school athletics!).

I suspect you will ignore facts again. But study after study from a task force of state attorney generals to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force have found that children are less vulnerable to online sexual predators than popular media and people like you make them out to be. Your kids are much less safe on their way to school (although they are safe given the low frequency of incidents) than they are online with a facebook page. Do you lock them in the house 24/7 to keep them safe?

And even with the relatively low incidence of predatory encounters online given how many people are online, the majority of predatory encounters solicited occur occur via chat rooms and instant messaging, not on social networking sites.

I suspect a rant is coming, but I hope not.