De-Pranking Teens
Four Israeli teens are under house arrest for having created and distributed the Goner worm last week. Early estimates of the damage from their "prank" were in the $8 billion range but have been scaled back to about $5 million. The lower figure is ridiculous, considering the distribution of the virus. It took me five hours to get things back to normalish. The standard sentence for such a crime is five years, but only half that because they are juveniles. I thought twice that would be lenient. The epitome of Earth Motherdom, the lovely Linda, thought they ought to cut their fingers off and agreed with my suggestion that we gouge out their eyes as well.
Oh, yes, I'm sure these are just a bunch of friends who laugh and strut together, and they didn't mean to cause the hassles they did. They didn't think. Right, they didn't think. They caused incalculable damage and pain to millions of people, in addition to financial losses reaching past ten figures, easily. Undoubtedly some marginal businesses, dependent on a timely exchange, failed because their computers crashed. Certainly meetings were not held, appointments missed, assignations skipped because these boys didn't think.
Ya gotta think that with the attention they've gotten over the last few days from authorities that they are maybe now beyond thinking; just kinda stunned. Linda generally refers to the class, redundantly perhaps, as brain-dead teenagers, and any adult honest with himself is gonna admit having made remarkably thoughtless decisions in the confusion of adolescence. I still cringe when I think of some of the things I did, said, and thought back then. How ridiculously transparent now seem the hard-forged plans and excuses of my youth. AAAArrrrgggghhhh, as Charlie Brown would say.
One of my biggest objections to the way we're running the world today is that we're not really thinking very well. We are stubbing our toes in every moment over the cobblestones of good intentions paving our way to hell. Most of our problems stem from money, and its pursuit, at the expense of the lives we're working so focusedly to pay for; especially when it comes to thinking long-term. For instance, we virtually guarantee a rocky future by throwing our clueless teens out on their own — with their equally misaligned peers — to define themselves in a world that is nothing like the world we've described to them.
To say that boys will be boys is not enough. I'm for treating these teens harshly to get the attention of other would-be's who would be less likely to prank about if the worm perpetrators suffered visibly for their social failure. No, not by losing appendages but by going to jail for a long time. The old send-a-message game. But let's not stop there, because while the problem of not integrating pre-adults into our version of the real world needs to be addressed. If not by their parents, then by the community that needs to be protected from them.
In the long-term, it is to our far greater benefit to be more involved in the children's lives, not only to help them to find their way, but to make sure that they don't get so dangerously lost that they grow up to be terrorists. Or they don't grow up at all, but instead take up arms against a sea of troubles. Or die walking on a railroad track. We owe it to them — all of us, parents and not alike — and to ourselves and our future. Use both the carrot and the stick, but make sure that we're there explaining both.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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