HW 7: Why Public?

I believe that it is important for parents to monitor what their middle school children are doing on the Internet. Middle school is the age where children begin to experience and explore different opportunities that the Internet offers. During this age the children are undergoing many different changes including their bodies, their friendships, their experiences, and their work. With the Internet undergoing many new advances in social networking, this makes it very prone for them to get caught up in the act of LiveJournal, Xanga, or other such blog networks in which they can express their feelings and emotions. This would seem like a good idea in order to take stress off the children, yet why are these children posting their own life experiences for anyone to read, when they can just have their own personal journal or diary. In Emily Nussbaum's "My So-Called Blog" she explains that these children are indeed opening up a different side of them for all to see.

"A result of all this self-chronicling is that the private experience of adolescence-a period traditionally marked by seizures of self-consciousness and personal confessions wrapped in layers and hidden in a sock drawer-has been made public" (Kline and Burnstein 351)

Some say it is a desperate cry for attention while others may say it is just a way to relax and express their emotions running through their heads and to have other be able to relate and respond to their stories. Yet I have heard and seen of blogs in which children have ridiculed other children for the content that was in it. Why should parents be allowing their children to post this information on the Internet when it may just end up causing them more harm then they were already feeling. In order to avoid this, I believe that parents should have the right to view what their children are doing online for their own safety.