Beginning with "To Catch a Predator", the media plays a very important role in keeping those young and old aware of the dangers online. A child is more more likely to respond to a television serious or visual stimulant than what their parent's tell them or through reading an article. Movies like "Cyberbully" and the "Craiglist Killer" display all of the dangers that come with anonymity online - especially with teenagers and young children. Outside of television, adults and parents tend to learn things from articles on how to teach their children to be aware of dangers. I understand that these may be helpful for some but it truly comes down to what the child is doing - which can sometimes be out of the parent's control.
Additional measures that I feel would be successful in increasing children's awareness of sexual predators online would be awareness through schooling. Children and teenagers spend the majority of their time at school and having maybe a class or assembly each year to keep kids informed could be extremely beneficial. Also, it may give children who don't get the correct information from their parents, or children who don't listen to their parents, get the right information they need in an easier and less threatening way.
I find current laws sufficient for protecting children, however, the protection of privacy of those who have been labeled as sexual predators is definitely compromised by sites such as familywatchdog.us and shows such as "To Catch a Predator". At least "To Catch a Predator" entraps people who are actually about to perform a sexual act - those who are on family watchdog have sometimes not even been involved in something sexual. The police can arrest you for being a sexual praetor just for peeing in a public place - something that poses no threat to the sexuality of children. Parent's should be more careful when looking at these site and not jump to any conclusions.
I honestly don't hold these sights responsible for what happens to those children who are a part of or are victims of cyber bullying. The sites aren't created for this reason and it really is the fault of the participants who push the limits of social media. It is the responsibility of those who take these sites to a bullying level and it is their responsibility to be punished for these actions. I, also, don't blame the parent's for what their kids do. It is extremely important that the kids who cyber-cully take responsibility for their own actions so that they learn not to do it again. By blaming everyone else we are not putting an responsibly on the child and therefore they will see no wrong in what they are doing.
Social networking site should not be help criminally libel for these crimes because they are not the ones to blame, as I discussed earlier. To prevent these types of incidents children and especially teens need to be informed. It would be beneficial to invoke conversations on cyber bullying in a school environment. To keep parent's informed they should know to read up on the subject online, or the school could send out a newsletter before each discussion they have with the children. I feel that in Megan's case, criminal charges should be put up against the person pretending to be Josh. She should be tried on terms of Involuntary Manslaughter.
Anonymity online is just a part of our media life at this point. Trying to restrict such a thing would be a violation of what the internet is, a violation of the Second Amendment, and unreasonable. Bad things are always going to happen online and in real life and we as a society just need to accept the good with the bad. Anonymity protects those from outside judgement of what they want to say and from government restrictions on people's opinions. People should always be able to protect their privacy because we as a nation expect our privacy at this point. However, it is unreasonable to believe that anything you do on the internet is totally private.
There should be no extreme limits on people's anonymity because, as I said before, it would be an unreasonable attempt at keeping bad things from happening. It is impossible to keep all bad out of the world and expecting to get rid of anonymity without a huge backfire from those around the world who depend on their Freedom of Speech is just plain stupid.