What a sad state of affairs that not much shocks me anymore. I was standing out in the yard the other day catching up with my neighbor, comparing weeds, aches and pains and recipes.
We got on to the subject of Fridays 20/20 and as I listened to my neighbor share her thoughts about this icky situation (cyber affair which ended in murder) I was nonplussed. While my neighbor was horrified I just shook my head and clearly wasn't surprised.
"What is wrong with these people?" My neighbor asked. "How can you make friends on line with someone you don't know?" "Easy" I said. "I have a handful of friends who aren't 3-D. In fact, I know lots of people who have developed close relationships online. It's replaced the days of real letter writing and being a pen pal."
And so we went on to talk about how this could happen. Was it the inter net's fault? Or was this guy going to cheat anyhow? And then we talked about addiction and how the Internet, Internet sex, Internet porn, proves to be incredibly addictive to many. This of course digressed into pedophiles and how they come to be. And do we just hear more about their activity because of the media or are there really more.
I guess the look on my face wasn't concerned enough because my neighbor asked me if any of this bothered me. And of course it does -- but sadly I think I have become jaded, or hardened to this stuff. I work really hard to make sure my child is out of harms way. He doesn't access the Internet unless we are sittingrightnexttohimthisclose -- and he hates it. But oh well. Friends come to our house, he doesn't go to anyone's house we don't know, and even those we do know, I am in suspended judgment. There have been way too many news reports I have read and heard about kids being abused at their neighbors house for me just to let my kid go off willy nilly.
So I do care. I just don't freak out anymore when I read about it or see it on TV. I just hug my kid that much tighter and think about the ways I need to go about keeping him safe.
2 days ago
1 comments:
I know, sad as it is, we hear these stories so often that we become numb to them.
I also have friends whom I have never met. I have friends that I met first online and then in person and those friendships are just as special and important to me as the ones where you met the person and a computer was not involved in any way :)
Sad fact is .. the Internet has made Things easier. In some ways, this is a miracle, it is so good. And in other ways, it helps people do things that are only bad .. unimaginably bad.
So we each have to do what works for us and what you are doing with your child.. keeping him safe, however you can.
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