Media: Internet misuse

The first news source I checked for articles on internet misuse was the local paper—the Bend Bulletin.  However, the CMC topic of the week is…drumroll…politicians tweeting updates to their fans.  The only type of CMC abuse I spotted there was common courtesy.  Tweeting during the President’s speech?  Come on, that breaks a courtesy rule I learned in grade school.  At least McCain’s sarcastic comments on the latest pork bills were amusing. 

 

Rather than dig through a week’s worth of newspapers stored in the recycle bin, I turned to the internet site for FoxNews.  There, I found an article entitled “MySpace: 90,000 Sex Offenders Purged From Web Site” (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487486,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/cybersecurity).  Apparently, sex offenders were faking names and ages on MySpace and trying to contact people under 18.  MySpace administrators put in place new ways to corroborate users’ ages and restrict people over 18 from viewing the accounts of minors.  (Also note: FoxNews and MySpace are owned by the same parent company.).

 

This highlights one of the problems of CMC—perverts and scammers always find a way to use communication technology to their benefit.  Over the past week, I also read a news article reporting that Craigslist has become a major enabler of prostitution.  No matter what the altruistic or idealistic views of the creators were, the internet has a great potential for harm as well.  MySpace is perfect for anonymity and false presentation, so I agree with the stricter methods.

 

A related question, though, is about the victims or targets of sex offenders (or scammers, or perverts).  They need to be aware of the potential for misuse, and be alert for the signs of danger.  Sometimes, though, it seems like some people check their common sense at the door.  I just read another article online about middle-aged Canadian women who were bilked out of $300,000 by a Nigerian scammer on a dating site.  The guy wooed them via text messages and then asked them for help paying for his child’s “surgery.”  Last year, a Portland teenager tried to run away to Southern California to meet some sex offender that she thought was just a normal guy. 

 

Part of my concern here is about the common sense of the victims.  The other part of my concern is about the internet safeguards taking the place of common sense.  Yes, there’s a sucker born every minute, as PT Barnum put it, but restrictions and safeguards can only protect them so much.  In a related issue, parents often try to oversee every part of their childrens’ internet life, in order to protect them, but are they overprotecting their kids so much that the kids don’t learn how to take care of themselves?  Yes, MySpace and other networking sites need to do their part to keep sex offenders from kids, but the kids also need to be on guard themselves.

 

This relates slightly to Postman’s mentions of education in this week’s reading.  He mentions more about it in the next chapter, but this week he raises the question of “What is the purpose of education?”  He claims that, according to modern society, education helps students get good jobs.  I’d take it farther—I’d say that modern education aims to create good employees (except for a few high end schools that aim to create the leaders who will govern the good employees).  Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t appear to be on the curriculum.  Actually, common sense doesn’t even need to be in a textbook.  That would be giving into the philosophy that a textbook can teach us anything.

Advertisement

~ by skwalker on March 9, 2009.