so I was reading on the new web edition of The Chronicle this morning about how a middle school Principal sent out an email to all parents asking them to not allow their child to have a Facebook account. Apparently there has been a high rise in cyberbullying and text message bullying. Where are the days when issues in school were yes, bullying, cliques, and fitting in? We still have those issues but now it is all over the web and well, the world.

I personally do not see why a teenager needs to have a social networking site account to begin with. I mean, do they not see each other at school, each others houses, or talk on the phone? Gone are the days when we only had to worry about strangers on the street walking home from schools, now there are cyber predators and sexual predators harassing our children online. I realize I do not have children but I do have a niece who is just about to enter the teenager years, and I feel for my sister. This age and society we live in now is more dangerous than ever before.

I am at a cross roads with my Facebook use. While I have an account, I tend to use my account more for job hunting and networking with other librarians. I do know many librarians, libraries, schools, colleges, universities, etc. who have an account. So here is my dilemma. We say that our children should not have an account, however, we do. If this is the case, which I think no child under the age of 16 should have one, then why aren't there and security or safeguards in place by these social networking sites, to prevent a teenager from signing up for an account. There should be some means in place to verify if this person activating an account is indeed over 16. The only other means for parents to prevent teens from having an account is to say no, monitor what they are looking at online, and for god sake, stop letting them have computers in their rooms.

Now if parents follow the guidelines outlined by the Prinipal in his email such as monitoring computer use, placing the computer in a common room for parents to monitor, utilizing parental controls, etc, then great there shouldn't be a problem right? Wrong. This pushes the teen even more to then sneak around behind the parent's back and do it anyway. The old cliche, if you prevent a teen from seeing someone you do not like, then they will find away to see each other anyway. Same thing with social networking. Who will stop a teen from going to an innocent invite to a friend's house? or even better to the library at school to set up an account?

I believe when the time comes, the teenager is bugging you to no end, that is when the parent should sit down with them at the computer and teach them the responsibility of using such sites. Would you want your teen to learn and talk to some other irresponsible person or from you?