Don’t visit the Internet, its a Horrible place to spend a weekend

I was going to write an article today, commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Lunar Landings, when I was presented with a lovely little gem about twenty minutes ago. While I am still going to write up a piece on the Lunar Landings, I fell that this is a topic that needs my full attention.

Over the weekend a 14 year old girl from Western Heights College, in Geelong, Victoria, committed suicide after receiving an ‘internet message’ last Friday, becoming the fourth student in six months to kill themself from the school.
The death of a student through suicide is a terrible thing, and questions are always asked as to why these things happen, however, in this instance, the mother of the girl, has her sights set straight on the internet.

Now, not to put a dampener on a tragedy such as this, but my first reaction to this news, was not ‘Oh my another student killed themselves’, it was ‘I’m want to smack that girls mother.’ No I’m not heartless, but I am over ignorant people, usually parents’ blaming the ‘internets’ for problems that have existed since before the net did this case specifically, considering that in the last six months, a total of four students have committed suicide, I would be looking more at the school than the internet.

Now it is natural to blame the cause of a tragedy, but for reasons known only to this woman, she has decided that no human is to blame for her daughters suicide, but in fact that it is the entirety of the internet that is to blame, and insists that children should not be allowed on it, in fact she goes as far as to say

“I want to tell people to keep their kids off the rotten internet, it’s a horrible place,’’

and that

“I can guarantee you that if she didn’t go on the internet on Friday night she’d still be alive today."

I’ll give you a second to absorb that. The Rotten Internet is a horrible place…yes because we all want to go to ‘The Internet’ a vile place of scum and villainy, etc etc etc, in fact I spent my vacation at the Internet, its a nice place to stay, but I wouldn’t want to live there…that would be because it isn’t a tangible place.

The Internet is no different to mobile phones, landline phones, passing notes in class, scribbling things on desks ad nauseum. The Internet is NOT the cause of bullying, the internet is just the latest way that cowardly bullies have at their disposal to attack their victims. If we are to follow this woman’s logic, we should ban Mobiles, notebooks, school and all other means of communication.

It is unfortunately, words from people like this grieving mother, are just the thing that Australia’s Dill of the Year, Stephen Conroy, needs to back up his deluded Mandatory Internet Filter, just on the cusp of it being defeated in Federal Parliament, and people where wondering how I was going to work that in here.

It’s to easy to attack the medium in which the bullying takes place, however, all that does is disadvantages the majority of people who are doing anything wrong, the tougher job is to tackle bullying effectively. Though one advantage of banning children from the internet, is that we wouldn’t need the Mandatory Internet Filter…no, no one should be excluded from accessing the Internet, any person restricted, and we all lose our e-Freedoms.