PEA RIDGE — Is a gun a weapon or a tool?
Is a hammer a tool or a weapon?
Is Facebook good or bad?
Too often people of my generation (my children say I’m in their peers’ grandparents’ generation) criticize and bemoan the purported evils of Facebook, Twitter and all technological, computer social media gone wild. But, the entities in themselves are not bad.
The value - or detriment of something - is determined by how it’s used, by the people using it.
We people are an odd mixture of good and bad.
Even the best people have flaws and even the worst have some good qualities.
It behooves each of us to continually improve ourselves and those under our tutelage.
Many, many years ago, when my first children were pre-school age, a popular writer for parentswas Dr. Berry Brazelton.
One thing he said in that era about parents being cautious about child abductions and teaching children to be wary of strangers was that for children under the age of 5, it was the parents responsibility to keep them safe. They didn’t need to be made fearful by constant warnings about strangers.
After that, they should be taught, but not instilled with fear of all people they didn’t know.
There’s an old saying: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”
Are there bad uses of Facebook? Yes. I’ve known of child predators, of men who appeared to be good, moral men to the community who “sex chatted” underage girls, to use Facebook.
Are there good uses of Facebook? Yes. Our family has been able to see photographs of and stay in touch with family around the country and the world thanks to Facebook. Many people use it wisely.
This week, both our city and county law enforcement officers spent many hours searching for a young girl who may have been in danger. Thankfully, she wasn’t.
What’s the lesson?
Parents must monitor their children’s accounts.
Are we implying these parents weren’t? No. Apparently a friend of the girls used a mobile device to post the picture. In this age of technology, a computer is not a prerequisite for accessing Facebook or Twitter.
We must teach our youth more responsibility and to consider the effect of their words and actions.
A joke is not funny, ifeverybody isn’t laughing.
A prank is not funny if it causes harm.
A couple of teen-age girls bound the younger sister of one of the girls, took a photograph and posted it on Facebook. Thankfully, the girl was not harmed.
But, it took hours of anxiety, concern and work by both school officials and law enforcement officers, to discover that.
It wasn’t funny.
People make mistakes and, sadly, too often young people make many mistakes. Hopefully they, and we, will learn from our mistakes and not make the same one twice.
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Editor’s note: Annette Beard is the managing editor of The Times of Northeast Benton County. She can be reached at [email protected]. The opinions of the writer are her own, and are not necessarily those of The Times.
Opinion, Pages 4 on 06/06/2012