MyScapegoat, or How History Loves to Repeat Itself

The online article by the title “Why Youth Heart Myspace” defends social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook and searches for the motives behind their use by the youth today. The motives that are found in the article are that young people experience many restrictions in their real lives and the online world is one of the few places where they can feel truly free.

As a user of Facebook, I would agree that this is probably true to some extent, especially for younger users. Being 22 years old, I already feel a good amount of freedom offline and the main reason why I use Facebook is just for plain convenience. It’s much easier to invite people to parties and keep in touch with them when they’re all accessible from one place, as opposed to having to contact each one of them individually. It also has additional features, such as photo albums and profiles with personal information, including favourite movies, music and birthdates. All this information helps in initiating conversations and reinforcing relationships. I can certainly imagine, however, how younger users might be attracted by the limited adult supervision of the online world.

Personally, I never took the media seriously when it comes to scary stories about video games and the internet. As the article correctly points out, the same kind of stories were produced against comic books, rock and roll, movies and books. People are afraid of change and media thrive on fear. I’ve probably already mentioned this, but the very reason why I’m so put off by our book, the Reader, is that it’s so similar to mass media in its usage of scare tactics and the way it paints an absurdly hostile and malevolent world.

It's hard to say if we should laugh or cry.

The worst thing about it is that we are so susceptible to these fantasies. If parents only investigated this supposed ‘problem’ on their own a little bit, perhaps they would realize that just about anything their kids can do online is by far safer than crossing a street right outside their house. I suppose that it might also have something to do with the fact that in today’s society it is very common for parents to delegate raising their children to teachers, television and the computer. By giving away this power over others, they also lose the influence they once had. It’s understandable that they become frustrated when this arrangement doesn’t quite work out, but ultimately, who is to blame for it? It would seem sensible for them to take some of the control back. Instead, what we observe is them complaining to their delegates, on whom they imposed this responsibility in the first place.

If you don’t want your kids to play a violent video game, make sure that they don’t buy it, don’t try to ban its entire distribution. If you don’t want your kids to get scarred by their online interactions, explain to them the possible dangers of the online world, don’t just block it off entirely. It’s called good parenting for a reason.

Here’s a parody of a Facebook ad (do they even really have ads?):

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