Teen murdered after party promoted on myspace and via text

Link: abc7news.com:.

The search for a teenager who crashed a high school party and murdered another kid continues in the East Bay. The lesson for all of us with teenagers is to realize the power of technology they have at their disposal. A house party got totally out of control Friday when word of it spread like wildfire over the internet.

Blaming technology isn’t the way forward here.  As part of the article suggests, it’s about educating the users of the technology on both its potential and risks.

Promotion through text messaging and Myspace won’t necessarily have helped the matter — but the issue was caused by the provision of an apparently unsupervised house party.

It’s about time we were all taught how to use these new mediums.  We’re all taught how to write a letter in English lessons, why shouldn’t we be taught how to define your electronic or online presence with the likes of a blog or Myspace or the implications of using text to communicate with ‘everyone in the town’?