Quote: Lazzard @ 23rd January 2014, 12:35 PM GMTThat was just not an issue for my parents - neither was the concept of suicide websites.
Our generation of parent's are the first who've had to deal with the internet - it's a steep learning curve, and I think we're entitled to feel concerned.
As a parent, you must realise that as try as you might, you can't shield your child from every evil in the world all of the time.
Because my humour is sometimes too subtle (never thought I'd write that), I was mocking the tone of the article, the panicky, sky is falling, everyone's child is going to throw themselves in front of a train because of the Internet, hysterical bullshit that is being pumped out to sell newspapers to a nervous public.
Fear is a great motivator and in my day it was devil worship, comic books, heavy metal, video nastys, violent computer games, etc., etc. The girl who threw herself in front of the 7.39 didn't do so because of the Internet, she did so because she had a mental illness. The parents either didn't see that their daughter had this illness or refused to admit to themselves that something was wrong. Foisting the blame upon the Internet shifts the responsibility from their parenting skills to a faceless entity, as people have done so in the past before the Internet.
By all means feel concerned and even monitor your child's Internet activity, just don't buy into the fear mongering purported by the media establishment who've lost huge profits to the Internet.
Let's not forget how we are all being played - this story is big news because it features a pretty young white girl who died tragically. We love this kind of stuff, it speaks to our sickeningly morbid curiosity and need for salacious moral fables - obviously we prefer the ones where the young pretty white girl is kidnapped, raped and then murdered - but really, any dead young pretty white girl is fair game for publicity. If there is no physical bogeyman to attach blame, then go for the next best thing.
