<p>Can anyone tell me why kids get on the internet and use live journals to air their complaints and personal life issues? What do they get out of this? I have found them to be dangerous in that others, who read them, take them out of context, share them with anyone and everyone, and give poor advice. What can possibly be the advantage in letting everyone know what your problems are instead of a trusted friend or relative?</p>
<p>boysmom:</p>
<p>have you ever been on a plane flight next to a stranger who pours out the most personal details of their life? It's precisely the feeling of anonymity that does it, the thought that whatever you say won't get back to your parents, teachers, friends, etc...</p>
<p>Marite: It is not anonymous because friends have the address and read it. Some parents can also access it if they are monitoring their kids. What happened to us is that a parent copied what my son wrote and sent it to my son's school. It created a lot of trouble for my son. He has learned his lesson but we are still dealing with the fall out. He did not threaten anyone or the school. It was just venting but the person reading had no frame of context to judge it. Instead of contacting me as his parent they gave it to the school.</p>
<p>Okay, I understand. I've read some such entries and take them with a huge grain of salt as teenagers exaggerate a lot (is there anything that falls between the categories of "awesome" and "it sucks"?). The parent who copied the blog entry was really out of line, though.</p>
<p>I just think that parents should be aware that their child could be using this type of communication and talk to them about it. It can be very damaging and it is not jettisoned into cyberspace but is copied, sometimes edited or changed. The written word can become a permanent record used against the author and kids just don't get this. I was surprised that any of this even existed and did not realize the dangers involved. There are also Internet predators that can access these blogs. It is all frightening. I had seen my son using this once before and told him explicitly the precarious situation he was exposing himself to. He was told not to use the live journal again but unfortunately did. Now he has learned, the hard way, what I was warning him about.</p>
<p>internet safety is something we should continue watching.
Both my daughters have livejournals and I monitor them, ( well with the college student , she is mostly keeping in touch with people she doesn't use it as diary generally)
The 14 yr old journal is friends only but I required her to add me to her friends list, I think it is important that parents continue to monitor their childrens internet use until they get to an age where they learn basic safety rules including anything that may be interpreted as a threat to someone else as well as giving out too much personal information so that a stranger could indentify school etc</p>
<p>Parents monitoring this stuff will never be out of line in a world where people are concerned about safety. (As a side note, peoples fear of "Big Brother" should be revised.....its your neighbor who reports on your insurance fraud or other (real or imagined) transgressions.. the government doesn't much care.)</p>
<p>I agree with boysmom2 that any parent who doesn't give his child a strict lecture about the risks of expressing yourself in recorded writing is courting disaster. Kids aren't very smart about this type of thing. Digital cameras and the ability to instantly distribute things create risks too.</p>
<p>Was it mark twain who said "never send a letter and never destroy a letter"? I have that idea fouled up, but there is some good advice in it. I was in someones office once who had received a letter from a prominent businessman foully chastising him for some action or attitude. The person had framed it and displayed it on his desk. It did a great deal of harm to the writer.</p>
<p>"The parent who copied the blog entry was really out of line, though." </p>
<p>Disagree. Obviously that parent thought the issue was serious enough to notify someone, I'm sure she wasn't just trying to cause your son trouble. What if you had been mistaken about it just being venting, and something had happened, and she had known about it and done nothing. I'm sure the parents on this board would have been pretty upset then.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Obviously that parent thought the issue was serious enough to notify someone,>></p> </blockquote>
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<p>Yes, indeed, someone. So why were the OP not notified instead of sending the blog entry to the school? That's what I would have done, on the assumption that parents ought to know what their kids are up to, but do not always know. And if I had not gotten satisfaction from the parent, then and only then would I have notified someone else, including possibly the school.</p>
<p>Just another lesson that what is published on the internet is PUBLIC - if you post identifying information, you must assume that what you say will be available to everyone, not just the people who you think are reading it today. It's too bad that your son had to get in trouble at school to learn this lesson, boysmom2 - thanks for sharing, maybe it will help some others avoid a similar or worse fate!</p>
<p>Im assuming that the school would handle it confidentially unless community resources like police needed to be brought in, hard to keep that under wraps.
I can't 2nd guess because I don't know exactly what the presumed threat was but did the other parent wish to remain anonymous?
In our city we currently are dealing with high school students who carried out a plan to murder one of their best friends. Parents( and school district administrators) brought the plan to the attention of the school but for some reason it wasn't followed up.
<a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/169393_jasmer16.html%5B/url%5D">http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/169393_jasmer16.html</a>
I think we should count our blessings that the worst that came of this was the student learned that there are repercussions for posts on the internet.
Unless I knew the family personally, I probably wouldnt' go to the parents first with a threat because I would not know which way that would be taken.</p>
<p>The parent sent the blog to school and the school felt that they had to act on it. I was already aware of the blog and was going to act on it that day. Had the parent contacted me first, they would have been told that I was aware and acting on it immediately. I was never given the opportunity to act as a parent and it was taken out of my hands. Now the school is involved and my son is much more upset than he had been because the counselor shared everything with the head of the school. He is worried that this will impact his standing at the school and impact his future there. It was all unnecessary and I question the parents motives. Since they were able to remain anonymous, I have no idea who they are or why they sidestepped the obvious course of alerting me. I am left feeling that the parent had another agenda and wished to harm my child's reputation rather than protect him. It was my son's personal thoughts and his dissatisfaction with the way students are treated by other students if they do not participate in the common practice of drinking. It was a rant and not knowing my son, those who read it did not understand how disappointed he was about the issue. They just jumped to the conclusion that he was depressed.</p>
<p>Years ago I was googling around to find information in preparation for a volunteer meeting at my daughter's school. The blog of one of my daughter's classmates came up. The entry that I saw was very graphic in the description of her social life, drug use and her feelings about the people around her. Beautifully written, but quite scary. I wondered if the writer thought that only her closest friends had access. I mentioned it to my D because she needed to know that if you post something, it is out there for all to see. I can't believe that these kids don't have a way to password protect their blogs....or perhaps they choose not to?</p>
<p>If I understand correctly, your son was upset at the pressure to drink in his school and the way those who do not wish to be pressured into drinking are treated? And both the anonymous parent and the school, instead of focusing on the drinkers, decided that your son was depressed and that it was he who needed dealing with? All I can say is wow!</p>
<p>they can password protect their blogs, even when they have a public journal they can protect certain entries. They also can not hit "send"
I think it is typical of teens not to realize that actions they make today, even if it seems as "innocous" as detailing their latest date, may come back to haunt them later.
Also
I think that if a physical threat was made than that does need to be handled by authorities, but in a case like you describe marite, that does sound like a family issue, although it sounds like people who are being harrassed by a dominant group at the school need more support than perhaps the school is willing or able to give.
That does sound like the parent perhaps had other issues they were trying to involve by not contacting you
I don't know what your legal rights are, but you should be able to see his file and ease your mind that it has not been added.
( I bet they didn't add anything cause if my experience is common that would mean that they would have to not only write something up, but follow up. Easier to not)</p>
<p>Marite: That is what happened. My son's philosophy was strongly worded and in fact pretty articulate but he expressed a great deal of sadness about feeling excluded because he does not participate in the drinking activities, even though it is his choice. He has lost a lot of friends because he no longer fits in with their social choices.</p>
<p>I hope that the school tried to extend support to your son instead of chastising him for not wanting to be part of the school's drinking scene. And having done that, that it turned its attention to curbing drinking among the students and protecting others who do not want to be part of that scene.</p>
<p>It's too bad your son lost a friend; but I have seen how, as kids grow and their interests become clearer and diverge, that many who had been inseparable at an earlier age, grow apart.</p>
<p>I can't say that the parent was out of line because I haven't read the blog. If boysmom2 says the school/other parent were concerned about depresssion, might that parent have been trying to get help for the son without going directly to the parent. I am personally aware of a situation where a child (teenager) was being abused at home. The child called the child abuse hotline after seeing advertised on TV and explained that he was being abused and needed help. The police had already made several trips to the home of the child because neighbors had called to report "screaming" coming form the home (it was him being abused). The people at the child abuse hotline, instead of acting on the kid's word and investigating, called the parent (abuser) and told the parent that the kid had called. The parent further abused the kid for calling and the kid never heard form the child abuse agency again....</p>
<p>I'm sure boysmom would have only wanted to help her son. But, maybe the other parent thought that someone aside from the parent needed to know that this kid seemed depressed (suicidal?)....and perhaps the son has vented in the past about things that made the other parent question the kid's parent's ability/willingness to jump in....</p>
<p>Again, I am only addressing the reasons why the other parent might have acted in such a way.....</p>
<p>Not all parents are advocates for their childrren.</p>
<p>Momsdream:
What you are describing is extreme and not the norm. The clear majority of parents would do anything in the world for their children and not abuse them. Taking the tack that the other parent took was deceitful and disruptive and contacting the school was one of many options available to them. They were cowardly in hiding behind anonymity and choosing the school as an avenue to address what they considered a problem. It had nothing to do with the school other than relationships made there. It just exacerbated the feelings my son was experiencing and created more anxiety. The schools are not the final word on help for teenagers and in many cases are more worried about their liability rather than what is best for the student. How they proceed is not always in the best interests of the student nor has it been helpful in this case.</p>
<p>Boysmom, I am so sorry for what you are going through. My daughter experienced a similar, albeit less-public, distancing from longtime friends over drinking. This came out when I started pressing her about why she wasn't going to parties or dances anymore. She burst into tears and told me a bunch of her good friends were drinking, and she felt uncomfortable around it.</p>
<p>It was very painful at the time, but several years later she redeveloped friendships with many of them; the few who fell into hard partying stayed away, and that was OK.</p>
<p>Again, I am sorry you have to be dealing with all of this.</p>