This one came out last week, but unfortunately we got our Daylights Savings mixed up with St. Patrick’s Day, so we had to down that special order keg of green LeBatts LaBatts before it went bad. We know, we know, just like last year, right?
Anyway, on Friday the Plain Dealer ran a quick follow-up on the Chardon High School shooting that pretty much proves we’re news-cycle prophets over here Scene HQ.
The report detailed how police are getting a lot of complaints from parents about adults reaching out to their kids online over Facebook and creeping them the hell out. Emphasis ours:
A school district spokeswoman said some of the attempted contacts may have been from the news media.
“Earlier this week we had two reports of contacts attempted on Facebook,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what was said. That’s what we are investigating.”
Duncan said children need to be told to alert their parents of contacts by strangers on social media. He said parents should call the police if they believe it is necessary after reviewing the comments.
A day after the shooting, we wrote about how members of the national media were aggressively hunting down Chardon high students on Twitter, basically trying to shake down the poor kids for any newsy tidbits. Honestly, we’re pretty happy parents are taking their concerns to police. As we said last week, everybody’s got a job to do, but buzzing underage teens online isn’t the way to do it.
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2012.
One thing is being found out in today’s new social media world–If you push send to anyone, the world has it recorded. No more secrets might be a good thing. That means all of the creeps who think they are not known and can say anything they want on the social media are finding out the hard way that that’s not true..So remember all you pricks out there: Your better off just thumbs downing someone and not going off on some crazy hate binge..Unless you can do it in a funny and tasteful manner…like me. But then I am not anonymous which is also going to be the norm for social media in the near future. Things are changing fast.
There is no reason to bother these kids, no matter how much you want a story. Yes the world likes to know and be informed, but there is nothing good about badgering young people and trying to get their opinions about the event. Give them time to digest everything and give them their space. These reporters are a few steps below those crazy church protestor people.