People take the internet, seriously?

[PSP-Heaven]

And to add what I said, how can you trust people on the internet, what I mean is, take them seriously, you don't really know who you are talking too. Yeah, your friend gave you a screen name, but how about someone you met in a forum? They may be real nice and all, but you don't know who they are, they're values, etc. The real scary part of the internet is how pedophiles, and how they get people. They act real nice, then, ask for a meeting, and bam, your in a hole, you can't seem to climb out of. In question, this is real hard to draw the line between internet buddy, and friend.

[Jacob]

You're right once again PSP! There have been numerous instances where I've been watching the news and you will hear about some naive teenage girl who met a guy in a chatroom under a fake name, lied to her about his age and pretended to be nice so he could meet her, and when the girl thought she trusted him they met and the guy came up and raped her. It's sick. There needs to be somewhere where parents, teachers, whoever can say "Hey! This is where you need to draw the line. Don't go past it or you will get yourself in trouble." The trouble is, that no one is there watching people's every moves on the internet and BAM, those troubles become reality. It's really a matter of where do draw the line; teenagers and even adults need to use caution and common sense when surfing the net, because those websites could land you in trouble someday.

[mono1geek]

oh ive heard much worse than that..
i heard someone on guild wars stole something off another person, so then the guy who was stolen from flew half way across the world and went to this guys apartment and stabbed/killed him. Those stories are the ones that make u think the internet is going out of hand.

[lambada]

I personally feel as though there isn't a problem with the internet, in itself. It's how people use it. Even sites which aim to be good can end up being terribly untrustable sources. Take Wikipedia for example. Nice concpet, then people started editing the pages so they make no sense or are wrong.

What I find worse is that even though, at our school, and on our local news teachers are saying be careful on websites like blah.com etcetera it has become the 'fashion' for the young people not to listen to people in authority. Hence these events keep happening, then authority figures decide to block websites like blah.com so that the young people an't access it atall. This is where the young people get angry, so they stop listening to ANYTHING the autrorities say. They find ways around the bloicks eg through proxies.
This leads me to the conclusion that young people are bringing this upon themselves.

Ofcourse the young people KNOW what steps to take to ensure their safety, they just don't put themn into practice. I guarrentee you if you ask 100 young people what they SHOULD do in a certain situation, and what they DO do (EG asked for last name and address over chat rooms) you will get 2 different things 80% of the time.