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Sep. 6th, 2001 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoSo...
So![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tracylee went and put up a link to an article in the Washington Post about web diaries by teenagers. Here's the link.
Now, I first read a few entries of Nay's because I was hanging out in alt.binaries.webcams.pictures, where captures of her tend to show up. And I scouted out her website. As the article says, it's very teenager-ish.
But something about the Post article just kept giving me the creepy-crawlies.
I figured out what it is: the sheer, unmitigated fear.
Fear that teenagers are, you know, writing. And reading. And talking to each other. And finding out, in that loneliest of ages, that they're really not alone.
Fear of strangers. Fear of stalkers. Fear of opening up anything whatsoever about oneself.
I mean... last I checked, the US alone has about 135 million Net users, of various stages of involvement, according to Internetweek a week or two back. And the number of cases involving any sort of stalking or whatnot that's risen to criminal charges is... what, a dozen? Two dozen? Meanwhile, crime stats are at historic lows.
I just find it archetypal of our time that we're trying to put so much fear into these kids about their fellow human beings, and about each other. About anyone not of the same narrow age range. About thinking.
It's almost the psychic equivalent of suburbia, where instead of physically isolating the kids one house at a time, and telling them never to play with any neighbors spontaneously, and never to trust anyone, not relatives, not teachers, not clergy, not daycare, no one -- we're instead trying to segregate these kids out into little thought barrios, where they don't talk to anyone except those on the approved security list.
It's probably a futile attempt, of course. People being people, let alone kids being kids, just about the first thing they want to do when shown the Net is talk to someone else.
But I find it very disturbing that our society has these attitudes in the first place.
So
tracylee went and put up a link to an article in the Washington Post about web diaries by teenagers. Here's the link.Now, I first read a few entries of Nay's because I was hanging out in alt.binaries.webcams.pictures, where captures of her tend to show up. And I scouted out her website. As the article says, it's very teenager-ish.
But something about the Post article just kept giving me the creepy-crawlies.
I figured out what it is: the sheer, unmitigated fear.
Fear that teenagers are, you know, writing. And reading. And talking to each other. And finding out, in that loneliest of ages, that they're really not alone.
Fear of strangers. Fear of stalkers. Fear of opening up anything whatsoever about oneself.
I mean... last I checked, the US alone has about 135 million Net users, of various stages of involvement, according to Internetweek a week or two back. And the number of cases involving any sort of stalking or whatnot that's risen to criminal charges is... what, a dozen? Two dozen? Meanwhile, crime stats are at historic lows.
I just find it archetypal of our time that we're trying to put so much fear into these kids about their fellow human beings, and about each other. About anyone not of the same narrow age range. About thinking.
It's almost the psychic equivalent of suburbia, where instead of physically isolating the kids one house at a time, and telling them never to play with any neighbors spontaneously, and never to trust anyone, not relatives, not teachers, not clergy, not daycare, no one -- we're instead trying to segregate these kids out into little thought barrios, where they don't talk to anyone except those on the approved security list.
It's probably a futile attempt, of course. People being people, let alone kids being kids, just about the first thing they want to do when shown the Net is talk to someone else.
But I find it very disturbing that our society has these attitudes in the first place.
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no subject
Date: 2001-09-07 03:04 pm (UTC)I know what you mean about the gender differences here. I've been online since 1982, and while great progress has been made, I know I'm not really in any position to say how safe or unsafe a woman should really feel online.
That said, though, I think the Post writer was playing up on that -- "Look at these innocent teenage girls, just begging to be abused by a cruel male world!" Stated much more politely, of course, but that certainly seemed the premise to me.