After reading Miss Profe on her latest Blog entry titled ” You can’t make this stuff up“, I decided to blog after all about a story that is hard to believe… Maybe I made it up…
Here goes the story:

Once upon a time, there were several 11 and 12 year olds who wanted to be as cool as their older siblings and neighbors. Being cool to them meant becoming members of an online social network. They went online and created a MySpace page for themselves, in order to post pictures, make a friends’ list and comment on each other’s posts. Since they were not fourteen years old yet (Minimum age for MySpace), they simply needed to lie about their age in order to create an account. All of them got their parents permission to do so…

Some posted provocative pictures of themselves and friends, some of them used their full name, some of them had photos displaying their school names, some had posted their friends’ names, some used inappropriate language, some gave away many other private information, some of them cyberbullied each other in the comments…

As you read this list so far, I am sure you are not surprised… until… one of them posts an image of Adolf Hitler with a Swastika flag (Hakenkreuzfahne) in the background. It seemed to be the result of an embedded quiz taken to the question:” Are you going to be a dictator?” from another site. The answer followed below the image:

Yes, bow before me punk.
You are the shinning example of the young Hitler, ambitious, and you know how to get what you want.

Hard to believe.. a 12 year old…

Parents of these students were informed to make sure they were aware about their children’s online activities. After all they should be the ones making the decision of how “safe” they want their children to be and what is considered appropriate language and “exposure” for their own families. After being re-informed that the age limit is above their children’s age and that ANYTHING their child posts online can be downloaded, forwarded and exploited from anyone, anywhere and anytime… After being shown hard copies of their children’s sites… and pointing out that by posting photos of friends and classmates, they are also infringing on the other parents’ rights of not exposing their children online… that these hard copies could follow their children’s records… some of them still did not feel that their children did anything inappropriate.

As for the parent of the “Hitler” child, the comment was:

I am fully aware of my child’s site and I fully support everything that is on my child’s site.

Do you believe I made this story up…?

Intolerance-Indifference- Ignorance: Alive and well…

Posted: 26. May, 2007 at 5:42 pm. Filed under: Uncategorized.
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