Emily Bazelon: Why kids self-destruct by using cell phones and being online

Posted by Kendall Harmon

In September, a 13-year-old girl in Florida named Hope Witsell hanged herself. Raised in a rural Florida suburb, she was the only child of a church-going couple who met in the post office where they're both employed. "She often went fishing with her father in her big, white-framed sunglasses," according to the excellent reporting in this story in the St. Petersburg Times.

It is painful but you need to read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth

4 Comments
Posted December 10, 2009 at 4:23 pm [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Bystander wrote:

Kendall-thanks for making this known.  Parents need to be aware of this.

December 10, 9:44 pm | [comment link]
2. teatime wrote:

I was watching a show about Teen Moms on MTV last night and noticed ads warning kids about this very thing. I hope they listen. (And I hope they’re watching the Teen Moms show, too, come to that!)

December 10, 10:14 pm | [comment link]
3. Franz wrote:

This happened within our metro area.  Very sad, and a sobering reminder for all of us who are parents (I have a daughter who is roughly the same age as this poor kid).

Our daughters’ youth group had a long discussion about this case, and the issues involved.  My wife had a long discussion with both of our daughters, which we repeated as a family over the dinner table.  I can only hope and pray that parents and kids will wake up, and remember that they do not need to participate in the toxic aspects of our culture, that they in fact must not, and that they seek every possible aid in resisting its poisons.

December 11, 8:29 am | [comment link]
4. evan miller wrote:

I amazes me that young people seem compelled to put their every thought, no matter how personal, on Myspace or Facebook where the whole world can have access to it.  As the father of a 21 year old son and a 19 year old daughter, I’ve see it at first hand.  My wife opened her own Facebook account just so she could keep track of such things.

December 11, 3:20 pm | [comment link]
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