Babies With Blogs

For the past seven years or so, I’ve come across an unfortunate growing trend: 9, 10, 11, and 12 year olds with domains and blogs. Places on the web where they tell extremely personal things for all the world to see. Anyone can view it. Where as on Myspace or Facebook, one could be private with their profiles, but not a domain. Blogs and domains are open to the general public and there’s a third grader posting that she walked home from her school [link to school] all that week and was going to walk home again the next week because her mom is working late and she can’t stay at a friend’s house until her parents get off work. So when she gets home from school, she blogs about the walk home, her thoughts on the way home, and that she’s getting out of school a little early the next day. Ok. What’s wrong with this picture? Google the girl’s name and general location and her last name is just unique enough so her address is the first one that comes up on Google.

One has to wonder what kind of parenting goes on that someone thinks that an elementary schooler registering a domain like “juicy-kisses.com” or “i-love-the-shocker.org” is acceptable? I’ve seen the horrors of what lurks on the internet. I know the type of people who visit blogs may not always be the type of person you want knowing anything about you. Just eight years ago, a man visited my blog several times a day looking for information on me so he could “meet me” in the real world. Eventually his crush on me became something sickening where he had this fantasy site where I had been murdered after accepting his marriage proposal. I can only imagine what would have happened to me if I hadn’t discovered his blog, his obsession with me and his mental illness and not reported it to the police. I think they only reason he never made a move off line was because his name was attached to a police report that I filed for stalking.

But to let a child have a domain? I couldn’t imagine letting my 10 year old have one. She never asked, but I know she would have enjoyed having a website. I would have enjoyed letting her have one. If she were 15. I was 19 when I started my blog, and even looking back now, that was probably too young to have a blog. Having a blog and a domain is something no elementary kid should just have. At least not in my values system.

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