My daughter recently stayed home sick from school on a Monday. Her brother was still home from college, planning to return to Chicago that evening. My daughter was concerned about missing her classes, so she texted one of her classmates asking her what had been assigned. She did not hear back from the girl, so she texted her again. Apparently texting in school is permitted which seemed odd in the first place. However, someone did respond to my daughter's text saying that this was not the girl she was looking for but, in fact, a middle aged man. The man then proceeded to berate my daughter for texting him and being rude. He even sent her a picture of himself...just his face, thank God. This scared my daughter. She texted her other friends who proceeded to inform my daughter that the friend she was trying to reach had gotten a new phone over the weekend. Logic would say that perhaps this man was assigned the girl's old cell number.
Hhhhmmm. Something didn't seem right. For one thing, the picture of the man looked strange, certainly not a picture he took with his phone. With tears in her eyes and a trembling voice, my daughter came to me and her brother showing us the conversation and the man's photo. My son immediately sprung into action. He said with the utmost confidence that her friends were playing a nasty trick on her. I wasn't sure what to think but was saddened that my son's first reaction was that these "friends" were the instigators. My son jumped on his laptop, emailed the man's photo from my daughter's phone to himself on his laptop, and downloaded the picture into Google which almost instantly located the picture on a web page for a man who was a CEO in Portland, Oregon. My son had been correct in his assumption.
The next day my daughter confronted her tormentors when she returned to school. The kids seemed very proud of themselves for managing to play such an elaborate hoax on my unsuspecting daughter. Shameful. My daughter returned home that afternoon, baffled. "Why would they do that? Why be so mean and then think it's funny? I don't understand, Mom!" I didn't have the answers. Middle school cruelty has clearly escalated in this rapidly changing age of technology. I took a long, deep breath. We sat over dinner and talked for a long time about people, their motivations, and how to be careful of such things in the future. My daughter, unlike most of her peers, does not have access to Facebook and won't until she is 14. House rules. Her final statement at dinner, "I'm thinking I don't want a Facebook account anymore!" I'm thinking the same. And, yes, I got permission from my 13 year old to tell this story.
This incident was fairly innocuous compared to much we hear happening in the news with false presentations through the internet. What scares me is that kids of this age already have the knowledge to pull an image of a perfect stranger off the internet and "insert" him into a cleverly crafted teenage prank. It makes it so difficult for the victims of such jokes to make sense of it all. Needless to say, when my son came home the following weekend, he had a much more natural reaction....one I could relate to..."I'm gonna kick some ass! Nobody messes with my little sister but me!"
The next day my daughter confronted her tormentors when she returned to school. The kids seemed very proud of themselves for managing to play such an elaborate hoax on my unsuspecting daughter. Shameful. My daughter returned home that afternoon, baffled. "Why would they do that? Why be so mean and then think it's funny? I don't understand, Mom!" I didn't have the answers. Middle school cruelty has clearly escalated in this rapidly changing age of technology. I took a long, deep breath. We sat over dinner and talked for a long time about people, their motivations, and how to be careful of such things in the future. My daughter, unlike most of her peers, does not have access to Facebook and won't until she is 14. House rules. Her final statement at dinner, "I'm thinking I don't want a Facebook account anymore!" I'm thinking the same. And, yes, I got permission from my 13 year old to tell this story.
This incident was fairly innocuous compared to much we hear happening in the news with false presentations through the internet. What scares me is that kids of this age already have the knowledge to pull an image of a perfect stranger off the internet and "insert" him into a cleverly crafted teenage prank. It makes it so difficult for the victims of such jokes to make sense of it all. Needless to say, when my son came home the following weekend, he had a much more natural reaction....one I could relate to..."I'm gonna kick some ass! Nobody messes with my little sister but me!"
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