How to Be a Bully in the MySpace / YouTube Generation

I guess this might be a bit off-topic for the subject of data security this week, but one of the things I like to pursue in this class are how ethics apply to information technology. You’ve probably heard of this incident in the last couple of days where a young girl in Florida allegedly said some unkind things about her friends on MySpace, so her “friends” retaliated by videotaping themselves beating her into unconsciousness and threatening to post the beating on MySpace and YouTube.

Here’s another link to the story from NBC’s The Today Show. with other cyberbullying links in the article.

MySpace is a useful social networking site, and there are many organizations who actually use the site to promote their business (whether they own a private business or are some type of entertainer). On the other hand, there is quite a bit of abuse that goes on there as well. People fake their identities on MySpace and use it as an avenue to lure children into sexual situations. People impersonate other people on MySpace and attempt to gain notoriety or pretend to speak for someone else. Children use MySpace to send hateful and vindictive screeds to classmates or an entire school to single out one particular person.

YouTube simply exists for entertainment sake, but there happens to be a lot of copyrighted material on there as well. It used to just be people putting up their own videos, like an internet version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Now, you can watch portions of music videos, sporting events, television shows, and movies on their site, and even when one person gets in trouble for posting copyrighted materials, another one comes along and takes their place or they simply create a new user name and go right back to posting those materials.

I’d like to hear other thoughts on the topic. Number one in the matter is that I think many parents have not done enough to educate themselves on what the computer can do, what their children are doing on the internet, and placing the computer in a location where their activities can be monitored. Personally, it would not bother me a bit if MySpace or YouTube went away. I enjoy using both of those sites, but I have noticed a certain mean-spiritedness and vulgarity that has crept into both of those sites over the years. But number one, I think that the activities that precipitated this event show a laxness from the adults in this situation to allow this to occur, and now all of these children have the possibility of serving real jail time and being charged for their actions as adults because their parents were not diligent enough in observing what they were doing on the internet.