I was intrigued by this bit: ‘before you take the quote out of context and assign meanings and motivations to MY words, perhaps you should have considered going to the source.’ Is Lori really labouring under the misapprehension that because her name appears in a news story someone can track her down and ask her a few questions? I guess that if she does believe that, it would explain why she was so stressed about her kid talking to a strange man on MSN or whatever it was. ‘OMG NEXT THING YOU KNOW HE’LL BE LURKING IN THE BUSHES!’

Truth is I have no idea who or where Lori is or even if she’s a real person. Even if I did I’m afraid I wouldn’t have bothered to ‘go to the source’ as she puts it because … well I hope she won’t be offended by this but the post wasn’t about her .

I’m not sure if you’ve ever been interviewed by the media, but they take interview and fit the questions and its answers to meet the needs of the article they are writing. It’s what it is, but then someone like you latches on like a rabid pit-bull and feel the need to vilify people you don’t know.

There was far more to this story than meets the eye, and before you take the quote out of context and assign meanings and motivations to MY words, perhaps you should have considered going to the source.

Far from being socially or any other kind of conservative, I have kids to raise, and I’m not a freakin’ helicopter parent, but precautions do need to be taken, because they are kids running on hormones and not brain cells.

However, it is good you were able to so aptly wrap your incorrect assumptions into your flawed hypothesis.

So you have parents living a comfortable western lifestyle - mothers with little on their minds bar an occasional tea party or tennis outing - and what do we see? Over-zealous protection of the only thing of real import in their lives — their kids — and in lieu of tiny levels of crime in the modern world, focus turns to *anything* else that might be a cause for concern.

Same with terrorism really. Just as the immune system sees pollen as a deadly threat, people brought up on a diet of cold-war propaganda find it difficult to lower their expectations of international threat. Sadly, this may mean a generational change will be required to deal with ‘terrorism’ in a mature and realistic way.

Locking up children and teenagers away from the world, especially computers is the only solution.