Myspace, The Small World Phenomenon, and Kara Beth Borden

After reading your post about what a small world phenomenon sites such as myspace, xanga, live journal and so on are, I definitely agree. However, I feel as though we have always been told since we were little to becareful as to who we talk to and associate with online. Perhaps, the problem is not only the xangas and myspaces but also that people are having too much access to the internet to young with no parental controls. But I definitely do agree with the idea that sites like these do contribute to this small world pheomenon.

Just to update everyone, check out this article. It explains that David Ludwig'a lawyers are saying, in released court documents, that Kara Beth willingly left with her boyfriend, David, after seeing him shoot both of her parents to death. The court documents are quoted as saying, she wanted to "get as far away as possible, get married and start a new life,". Because of this, prosecutors are thinking about dropping the kidnapping charge against David but still charging him with two counts of murder.

I think that this relates to the general issue of the media's violent influence on kids and how that effects violence amoung teenagers. When occurances such as the Columbine school shootings started cropping up, many turned on the media as the source of the violence. People felt like the violence in video games, television and music was in some way responsible for the shootings. Blogs are under the same kinda of criticism after the shootings and kidnappings. But I think that we're going to end up with the same conclusion.. you can't blame blogs for the crimes that occur... thats only one small part of a much larger picture.

I think I missed something; how are blogs related to this story? They probably both owned shoes too, but I don't see the cause and effect.

I have met a variety of people who I knew online first and then in real life. Many of them have been real nutjobs. I have this sick optimism, though, that more people than not are good people and so I keep meeting people offline who I first knew online. The few good people I can meet from the connection of a computer to another computer make it all worth it in the end. :)

Since the days of Cleopatra, raising a young hottie has always been a problem ... especially so when the parents take the narrow view that locking her up or restricting her movments (or homeschooling) is the One True Answer To All Problems.

Kara would likely have been better off in a large metropolitan high school, where she could have interacted with more kids her age, and see the problems of having an adult boyfriend play out.

wow
you've defiently done ur research.

Myspace and Xanga cause an increase in crime rate? HA. HA. There may be some kind of a twisted correlation but I guarantee that there is no more causation than a decrease in the number of pirates causing an increase in global warming. Interesting article though.

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