So chatting makes teenagers murderous sluts??

The normal rules mean squat on the Web by Christie Blatchford.

She's talking about this murder, background here.

Gruesome sad stuff indeed, but bizarre that Ms. Blatchford seems to think that internet enabled chat and Facebook are to blame?

ie:

M.T. and D.B. communicated compulsively - on MSN and Facebook, on cellphone and by text message.

Among the evidence introduced at the girl's trial were cell records showing the pair called or 'texted' one another more than 5,000 times in the four months before Stefanie's death, and Toronto Police recovered an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 MSN and Facebook posts between them from four computers the pair used.

Staggering as those numbers are, they don't begin to capture the frantic nature of the couple's communication - constantly accusing one another of cheating, he professing his love in the most florid language, she functioning as a self-appointed probation officer grilling him on his whereabouts - or the astonishing level of minutiae to which it descended

Yeah, 'cause like married adults who live in the same house don't speak to each other over 5000 times in 4 months. These are teenagers (murdering ones sure), but like any other kids they *don't have the same freedom of movement as you or I*. Take two kids who are unhealthily hung-up on each other, throw in some communication devices and an 11:00pm curfew, who isn't going to get a bit salacious over the wires. And since when was grammar indicative of psychotic tendencies?

It's disingenious to blame technology for shifting tectonics of psychological disorders. In fact worse then disingenious, it's not going to help anyone, least of all other teenage girls with borderline personality disorder who are probably soaking up the media circus around the new "girl murderer" craze.

If we want to ponder 'why' girls seem to have lost the capacity to reason morally, to enjoy their own lives, and to respect the rights of others. Maybe we can look at the schizophrenic messages of sexual power and sexual submissiveness sent by most outlets of mainstream media. To truly understand murderous rage let's look at how teenage girls - expected to flaunt their sexy girl power, while starving themselves to death - may well be caught in the kind of double bind that results in personality disorders.

I look at the f-ed up messages aimed at teenage girls these days and I am shocked that more of them aren't flipping out. The kinds of double-standards now accepted as "part of the landscape" would have driven me to extremes when I was 15. In fact I got the watered down version of today's culture of 'sexting' in 1994 and I remember feeling pretty borderline a lot of the time.

At the very least Ms. Blatchford, remember this is not a cold-blooded killer, despite what you may want to believe. This is a teenager - a precocious, hot-blooded, and maladjusted one, but still not an adult. A young woman who will have to take account for her actions, and then somehow heal herself. And unlike you or I, she's still so new in the world, I'd be surprised if the fact of her behavior isn't written on her future development for the rest of her life, one she's got quite a bit of left to lead. I for one have no desire to hate her, I only feel a great deal of pity.