The Internet - It's Dangerous Out There

About six or seven years ago, I was a regular attendee on an MSN forum. Through that forum, someone got hold of me and we started talking on MSN Messenger. I was immediately concerned and worried because I was a twenty six years old and she was thirteen (so she said).

Instantly, I was worried. She started to talk about suicide and how she felt that nobody loved her, so I really felt that I couldn't just block her and disconnect her from my MSN buddy list, but I also knew that it was not a healthy thing for me to be talking so much to a stranger so young, or for her to be talking to a stranger so old.

In the end, I got the Samaritans in touch with her and she vanished. I hope to God that she's Ok and growing into a well rounded person with all her issues sorted.

But what I find fascinating and concerning at the same time is how she was looking for someone to talk to and she didn't seem to care who it was.

The media portrays the internet as a place where dirty old men are looking for youngsters to groom, but what society must face is that it has created a such a loveless environment that these youngsters are actually going out to look for whoever will listen. In the case of the young lady I just mentioned, I guess she was lucky that I wasn't a predator, but what if I was? What if she had gotten in touch with someone who was more interested in something that would ruin her?

While we must try and clear the streets and (virtual) highways of those who would seek to harm vulnerable people, something also has to be done to address the needs of those who become vulnerable because of a society that tells them they're worthless unless they are economically active.

What has prompted this is a video and a person I have stumbled across on YouTube, someone I shan't mention here, but it has alarmed me at how people are looking to belong and find hope. The internet will only give a sugar coated pill to take the pain away for a few hours, the TV and video games just mask the pain with a numbness and everything else just gets given the 'WOTEVA' treatment.

People are hurting and we think that we can heal them by giving them a webcam and an internet connection?

People who live for state benefits, who hang around bus stops drinking beer, who would rather buy three rings for each finger rather than a baked potato, who would rather vote for Big Brother than a politician who actually cares, who let their toddlers roam the streets at ten in the evening and who only wreck their own houses for the insurance they can get are not the cause of a rotten society, but the symptoms.

I'm not a pinko liberal and I certainly don't think we should molly-coddle people who would rather watch TV and drink beer all day in a house that has more fleas than Tony Blair has teeth, but when we tell people to pull their socks up, we need to try and identify the things that are making them not want to pull their socks up in the first place.

When we start identifying and addressing the underlying causes of society's ills, we may then find that places like the internet are much safer because there will be fewer people looking for love, and fewer people looking for 'love'.