Growing up Online

Frontline on PBS had an interesting article about kids growing up online:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

There are interviews with some of the people involved in the making of this video that you can read:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/interviews/

As well as interviews with the directors/researchers:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/etc/notebook.html

You can also find updates about some of the kids in the video.

There's also a deeper look inside the issues. As well as other things located at the main website link.


Myspace Suicide

This video made me think some other cases that occured over the last few years, especially one in particular:

Megan Meier was a teenager with some teenage problems who was duped by some ``friends'' including the mother of one of these friends. They had created a fake profile of a teenage boy and engaged in conversation with Megan. Eventually, they started to harass Megan with the fake profile and she took it rather badly and killed herself.

Here are some articles:

http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9819394-56.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/11/blog-readers-ou.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/11/megan-meier-sui.html

Some readers became so outraged that they outed the adults that had duped Megan and posted not only their names, but places of business, phone number and address. Then one of the bloggers who had outed them got outed herself:

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/11/vigilante_justice

An even odder turn in the case, is that of a blog that surfaced as a comment in another article called ``Megan Had it Coming.'' The writer of the blog at some point ``confessed'' to being Lori Drew, or the mother of the child who was friends with Megan, and had harassed her to her death.

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=14913
http://sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/megan-the-bitchhad-it-coming-or-how-to-kill-a-child-twice/
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/08/internet.suicide.ap/index.html

The blog was posted here:

http://meganhaditcoming.blogspot.com/

and seems to have been taken over by some someone else. Most of the posts have since been erased. Either way, this is a tragic story with examples of invasion of privacy and questions about how children should be protected.