Courage through Anonymity

I was watching one of those entertainment news shows tonight.  Not sure which one, but something like Dateline.  They had a show on teens and how mean/nasty teenage girls are.  I didn't learn anything new, I have seen this before.  My niece has had problems when she was in school, and so has my younger brother. It really started me thinking though.  The idea of the story was that kids are very mean to each other and they express this through the use of websites (like myspace), text messaging, cell phones, etc.  They talked about kids taking compromising pictures of each other with their cell phones and posting them on the web, or busting them with their parents.  They talked about kids creating websites that demean other kids.  There was some very very horrible stuff.  As a father of one young girl and one young boy it made me scared.  There was a story about one boy who committed suicide after being harassed by a few young teenage girls. It was very sick, twisted, evil stuff... and it's not uncommon.

It's not like teenagers being mean is anything new.  They were when I went to school, and I'm sure they were when you went to school.  So why is this anything to be concerned about?  Kids will be kids, right?  Maybe I'm getting old, but I can tell you I think the stuff I saw is just going too far.  If most of these acts were committed by adults, there would be lawsuits.  I'm sure there are several lawsuits even now among children. 

Many naive people just blame the internet and cell phones.  It's easy for people to blame what they don't understand.  Shut down myspace, ban cell phones, control the content of the internet. That's what I've heard many people say.  I just don't buy that solution.  I actually see several problems here and I would only make one change in regards to technology and the internet.

Ok, so now comes my lecture. From my point of view, this all comes down to teaching responsibility.  People are so quick to blame the medium... I mean, why not ban paper and pencil?  Do you think no-one ever wrote a nasty note?  Many people would argue that a note has a limited lifespan, where a posting on a website can live forever.  That brings me to my main point.  When you have a medium as powerfull as the internet, does anonymity have any place? 

The issue as I see it is that with many of these technological tools, kids have the power of anonymity.  How can we teach responsibility when people (kids) don't have to stand up and take the blame when they do something wrong.  In fact, these kids gain much courage through anonymity.  Do you think they would be half as mean if they had to say it to someone's face?  With anonymity comes courage.  I don't blame the medium... I don't blame myspace, or text messaging, or cell phones.  I blame anonymity.  Make the kids stand up for what they do and get in trouble when they do something wrong.  That's part of being a kid and growing up.  As it is now, no one knows what they are doing, or who is doing it.

Of course, a lot of this can also be solved by good parents who monitor what their kids are doing on the net and their phones.  The problem there is most parents don't know enough about the technology to understand.  The kids know more than the parents. Also, this only prevents your kids from doing something mean to others.  There are lots of parents who won't monitor what their kids are doing and your children could easily be a target.

So does anonymity have any place on the net?  What can we do about it? How can we make kids responsible for their actions?