For everyone so concerned about a troubled young girl being treated badly on myspace, why is there so little questioning as to whether it was appropriate for this girl to be on myspace in the first place. Everyone seems so worried about how the laws should protect from this type of bad behavior when it seems like the bigger problem is that everyone thinks it is OK for a 13 year old girl to have an on-line ‘romance’ with a 16 year old boy. Would her death have been less tragic if it had really been a 16 year old boy who was ‘mean’ to her? As some have pointed out, there are any number of hazards lurking for children through the anonimity of the internet, yet parents continue to allow them to participate without adult supervison — why not just drop your 13 year old troubled child at the mall by themselves and hope for the best!! And the only way that anyone can be ‘hounded’ on the internet is for them to actively engage — deliberately and repeatedly. Did it never occur to her mother to monitor and/or limit this child’s access on the computer, or more importantly, if it was even appropriate for such a ‘troubled’ young girl to be on myspace in the first place? Using the internet for a learning tool is a far cry from unattended myspace access, and if parents are going to continue to let their children (including emotionally unstable 13 year olds) enter the internet world unattended there will never be enough laws to protect them from the hazards.
