Dr. Laura Blames Technology When Users at Fault

I like Dr. Laura. I understand why she does her show the way she does. I find it entertaining radio. I listen. Also, I agree with almost everything she says. I particularly like to hear calls from people who clearly have no idea who they are calling, and they get shocked that she doesn’t give them some touchy-feely New Age answer-du-jour, but rather a cold dose of reality.

I know, I know. Some people hate her because she doesn’t spend half an hour coddling the feelings of each caller.

Or they hate her because she thinks of marriage as holy matrimony and thinks that sex is best saved for marriage. Or they hate her because she thinks they ought not to slaughter their own babies. Or they hate her because she encourages parents to raise their own children. Or they hate her because she encourages husbands and wives to tend to each others’ needs. Or they hate her because she thinks we should kill terrorists before they kill us. Radical positions, I know. I don’t have a problem with any of these.

Every once in a while, though, I think she is completely wrong about something.

Today, I heard Dr. Laura bash/summarily dismiss MySpace.com as being “juvenile”.

Now, I understand that she’s had at least one really bad experience with MySpace. Her deployed paratrooper son’s MySpace page (or at least a page that claimed to be his) gained negative attention when it displayed offensive material. I don’t know what the ultimate conclusion was – whether or not he put the material there or someone else did. Let’s assume for the sake of this argument that someone else put it there against his will.

So what?

We’ve had harmful impersonators, frauds, and identity thieves around for a lot longer than MySpace.

MySpace isn’t the problem. MySpace is nothing more than a convenient collection of online features - many of which previously existed and were typical - in one place. MySpace is a web space host, an e-mail host, a photo album host, a search engine, etc. combined. Dr. Laura has her own website that takes e-mail. It isn’t at MySpace, but most people can’t hire a professional to design and run their own website. MySpace does it for them. Hence, the popularity.

I see “the Internet” get blamed for a lot of problems when it is really nothing more than a street corner, a post office, a library, a TV, and a store. Freaks, criminals, immature people, and liars hang out in those places, too. Saying that they "met on the Internet" is like saying "they met on the street corner". Do you stop using the streets?

Predators existed before chat rooms. While online communications have given them the ability to communicate with the children of strangers and show them inappropriate material from the comfort of their own homes, things like MySpace are hardly the problem. The problem is the evil predator.

There are ways to avoid having your child preyed upon online. Keep communication devices, such as networked computers, in common areas of the home. Don’t let them be home alone. Make sure they have enough sense not to go somewhere without an adult to meet someone they’ve never met. In the event they are home alone, make sure they have enough sense not to allow someone to come over. Don’t let them hang out unsupervised in the homes of kids who don’t have enough sense in these areas. You can protect yourself from those who prey on adults by using some common sense. Always meet someone new in a safe public place until you know enough about them to be in private with them.

Sure, people can put up a false front online, but they can do that in person, too. You think meeting someone (even regularly) in a bar, a club, a restaurant, a class, or even a church really reveals the totality of who they are as a person? No way. You learn who they are by spending time with them in different situations, communicating, meeting their friends and family, etc.
It’s okay for adults to meet each other online. What’s not okay is letting yourself believe that chatting, e-mailing, sharing pictures/audio/video is the equivalent of a face-to-face relationship. It’s not. Meet online, and if there appears to be potential, move along to actually spending time together. Otherwise, you are pen pals and nothing more.

Then there are the reports that try to shock us by telling us how many “sex offenders” are on MySpace (or in a given neighborhood). There are many who have cell phones and postage stamps, too. Run for the hills!

Seriously, though, yes, it is good thing to know who the rapists, flashers, and child molesters are so we can avoid them, and to keep them from contacting children. But the term “sex offender” includes much, much more than that. Homosexuals were legally sex offenders not long ago. It’s illegal in some places to have sex toys. I’m not really concerned that streetwalkers or their customers will be contacting my children via MySpace. Having (consensual) sex with a 17-year-old, no matter what your age, can get you labeled as a sex offender in some places, even though the public schools will hand them a condom and teach them how to use it. I’m not condoning fornicating with underage persons or with anyone, for that matter. Just making the point that there is a difference between someone who rapes seven-year-olds and an 18-year-old guy who fornicates with the 17-year-old.

Getting back to Dr Laura – the call that prompted her comments was from a young woman who was upset about comments her boyfriend made before he was her boyfriend on another woman’s online picture, calling her beautiful. Dr. Laura said that her boyfriend was being juvenile. Really? Having told other women in the past that they look beautiful or that they look good in a picture is juvenile? I don’t think Dr. Laura was thinking clearly at that point - I think her emotions were clouding her thinking.

She did say something during the call that was more to the heart of the matter – the youth (and not-so-youth) culture these days that promotes immodesty and promiscuous “hooking up” and glorifies partying and posting evidence of your partying online. That’s a cultural problem, not a problem with MySpace.

Dr. Laura’s line of reasoning could be used to scrap the Internet entirely, phones, and even cars. After all, while the pill was an accelerant of the sexual revolution, the automobile was the real start of the fornication culture we’re now in.

Don’t blame the technology. Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s the people. And although it is true that online communications have now allowed freaky perverts to network around the world, it also allows those who seek to protect and nurture children and uplift culture to network as well.

Like I wrote at the start of this post - I like Dr. Laura. That's why I hate to see her lessen her credibility with a growing number of people who now use sites like MySpace the way people were using ISP-provided websites ten years ago. She needs to promote the cautious and positive use of technology, not the broadbrush dismissal of it.