I believe that television shows like “How to Catch a Pretador” and websites like Family Watchdog do help prevent some instances of adults praying on children however I don’t believe they are always effective preventing these harsh circumstances. They definitely help show the general public that there are sick people in our world but at the same time that doesn’t mean every child or parent is aware of what could happen to young people on the internet. I believe that we as people could prevent these cases from happening even more by simply having educational course in elementary schools to show children how to protect themselves from strangers similar to how parent always tell their children to never take candy from strangers. I think the current laws we have are quite sufficient in protecting children however I believe that we as adults can educate children more about the dangers of the internet. I understand that media outlets that try to expose predators anger some people, however I believe that if a person is caught committing an act against a child they should be exposed. I realize that some people will be falsely excused and they might have to deal with some things they never should have gone through but at the end of the day I believe it is for the greater good.
I believe that social networks do deserve some of the responsibilities that they receive for when damaging news comes from what members on their sites have done. That being said, social media websites can only go so far in preventing people from saying what they want on their website. Just like schools do as much as they can to stop bullying it will still go on simply because it is unfortunately part of society in my eyes. I believe that parents can sometimes be held responsible for what their children do on the website but at the same time it is way to difficult to expect parents to know what their children are doing online 100% of the time. It is so easy to access the internet today with the use of computers or even by smart phones that it makes it nealy impossible for parents to always be able to control what their children are doing online. I don’t believe that social media websites should be held criminally libel for instances where people on their website defame other people, unless the website was promoting the idea of defaming certain people on the site. The only way in my eyes that these incidents can be prevented is if we teach children the true effects of cyber bullying. I don’t believe that we need to necessarily make new laws to help prevent cyber bullying I just believe that education of what can really happen online might make some children think twice before they make a bad decision. I don’t believe that criminal charges should be brought against Josh in Megan’s case. Although I find this example to be very tragic I don’t think that the kids running the account for Josh ever wanted Megan to hurt herself and I think that these kids had a tremendous lapse in judgment (as kids often do). I’m not quite sure what laws might be involved here but I would say that this is basically the ultimate case of cyber bullying. A group of children basically ganged up on another child in an effort to embarrass her and in the end a child was taken from her family over something so silly such as social media. It truly is a shame that makes me appreciate the fact that I never had to deal with things like this when I was a child.
Anonymity on the internet is an extremely complicated issue in my eyes. It helps protect the privacy of people who legitimately use anonymity but it also helps protect criminals and other people on the internet who use anonymity to create harm in our environment. I do believe people should have the right to protect their image online and for that reason I suppose there is only so much we can do to prevent people from committing crimes using the World Wide Web. I think that anonymity does help control governmental power for sure, (look at how different the internet is in China or North Korea) and that being said I believe we will just have to put up with the crime that comes out of it. Crime will never be stopped because unfortunately I believe it some people’s human nature to commit crimes. If you stop crime on the Internet criminals will find a way to commit crimes in other way, it is almost the law of nature the way I see it. As much as I believe that people should have to put return addresses in emails, it is not against the law to not include a return address in a mailed letter so I don’t see why that should be different. Anonymity on the Internet is just one of those concepts where we as people will just to accept the good and bad that comes with the territory.