As freedom shrinks, teens seek MySpace to hang out

Reuters ^ | 5/11/06 | Jill Serjeant

[craig_eddy]

i am concerned with people who don't capitalize properly and purport to be writers.

[JamesP81]

When my kids turn 12 I start letting them go off unsupervised for significant periods of time. I like to treat them like they're responsible until they prove to me that they're not....

It's a fine balancing act. You have to watch your kids considering all the predators walking about these days. With that said, however, you do have to start treating them more like adults at some point; if you don't, then don't be surprised if they never act like an adult.

[Tax-chick]

Driven to and from school, chaperoned at parties and often lacking public transport

Oh, no! Rides to school? No unchaperoned parties? And a lack of public transportation? IT'S GEORGE BUSH'S FAULT!

[Lizavetta]

My name is danah boyd and i am a PhD student .....Additionally, i am concerned ...... Prior to my current project, i studied blogging,.....Prior to Berkeley, i was a graduate student in the Sociable Media Group ....As an undergraduate, i studied computer science..... Outside of research, i have been involved in various activist organizations. For five years, i worked at V-Day,

How does one make it to the PhD level without learning capitalization?

[Tax-chick]

For five years, i worked at V-Day, an organization working to end violence against women and girls worldwide.

A nutso-feminist flake who's too Special to type normally.

[JamesP81]

Another problem is the schools. They don't teach kids the values of self-reliance, especially to boys. My landlord is a school teacher, and he tells me that they have a policy that if some kid comes up and decks you, and you fight back, both get suspended (what's even sadder is he thinks its a good policy, but that's another discussion).

When I was in school, those policies were already creeping in. When I told my dad of it, he had a simple response: "if someone starts a fight with you, you kick the living s*** out of them if you can. I'll get a lawyer to sort the rest of it out."

The point of this story is this: we don't teach self-reliance to our kids anymore. It's no wonder they get into so much trouble then when we finally have to turn them loose.

[DumpsterDiver]

Polite description: this is a woman with issues.

Honest description: she's a flake.

Surely you're not mocking her scholarly work about the "sexing of internet interactions to creating artifacts for memory work"?

Wonder who's paying for this? Hopefully, it's not her parents.

[goodnesswins]

"So they go to MySpace, where they can be under constant surveillance by anybody on the planet as well as their parents."

LOL....how RIGHT you are....of parents, relatives who have any brains, that is....but...I don't think there are many parents watching......it's NOT a very nice place.....I surreptiously monitor a couple of relatives (girls)....and I don't believe their parents have a clue....(These girls use their FULL names and give other info that shouldn't be on the site.)

[dljordan]

"Kids really have no place where they are not under constant surveillance."

I wish someone would stop by the park across from my house and explain that to the crowd of littering, dope-smoking, cursing, rude vandals who inhabit it at night. These kind have more money and freedom than any previous generation in America.

[Steely Tom]

Wonder who's paying for this? Hopefully, it's not her parents.

I have a feeling you can find out who's paying for this by looking at the "Federal Tax Witheld" box on your paycheck stub.

(steely)

[Texas_Jarhead]

""We have a complete culture of fear," said Danah Boyd, 28, a Ph.D student and social media researcher at the University of California Berkeley."

No, what we have is the facade of a "complete culture of fear" constructed surreptitiously by liberals in order to advance their social and political agenda.

[joylyn]

When I was eight I would leave the house alone and roam around town, the park etc. on my own. For that matter, at four I would take my tricycle out onto the street. This was in the 1950's and I lived in an industrial city, near the railroad tracks, the mill, some fairly seedy bars, etc. No one thought kids couldn't go out in public on their own. The idea that parents were needed to organize a kids' game would have inspired ridicule.

When my brother was 12 he and his friends hitchhiked everywhere. Being a girl, I took the bus. But my parents had no way of checking up on this.

Today's kids are constantly chaperoned and tethered to their parents by cell phone. It amazes me that they manage to mature anyway.

[monday]

"Gee, and I wonder why our kids can't hang out at the park anymore?"

I wonder too? I see kids hanging out at the park all the time. Different parents have different attitudes towards their kids. Some couldn't care less if their kids hang out at the park unsupervised, others practically wrap their kids in cotton and lock them in a closet for their own "protection".

I think that since the birth rate has been dropping, kids have come to have an almost mystical significance to some parents. All anyone has to say is "it's for the children" in order to pass almost any lame brained law or restriction.

I am all for protecting kids and when I have my own I won't let them play in traffic like you see in some ethnic communities, but the whole "child is king" mentality that prosecutes parents for child endangerment if they forget to strap their child in a safety seat is ludicrous. How the hell did society ever survive before safety seats were invented?

[PeterPrinciple]

Today's kids are constantly chaperoned and tethered to their parents by cell phone. It amazes me that they manage to mature anyway.


Growing up on the farm, each kid had his own 80 acres to roam on and there was 80 acres between each kid......worked ok.

[absolootezer0]

Perhaps their parents no longer have hopes and dreams. It's my opinion that most of middle class America has become slaves to their careers. No longer do they HAVE hopes and dreams, so how can they teach their children how to have hope, how to dream of a better life?

most of middle class america seems to have the same hopes.. lower taxes and to retire asap, and to pay off the massive credit card debts they used buying all the junk to keep up with the jones'.

[Pondman88]

"Today's kids are constantly chaperoned and tethered to their parents by cell phone. It amazes me that they manage to mature anyway"

That's why junior and juniorette are still living in the basement when they are 25 years old. Kids ain't growing up--it's an extended adolescence until age 35.