EDITORIAL
Amber McKenna
Dominic Baez

Preceding Facebook and MySpace, instant message programs and chat rooms were the rage of the Internet scene. With the increased amount of Web interactions came an increase in worried parents trying to watch out for the safety of their children.
A 14-year-old named Kenny from Denver may actually be Bob, a convicted child molester, chatting from the half-way house, or your MySpace friend Kim, who says she’s 17, could be in reality Officer Smith from the LAPD.
After years of parents’ fears of rouge strangers communicating with their children, nerves can be calmed thanks to a 2008 study conducted by the University of California, which was recently the subject of an article in USA Today.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, found that the majority of teens use the Internet to correspond with people they are
familiar with, rather than with strangers. Researchers polled 251 teenagers grades 9-12 about their social networking and online communication habits.
While it is a relief that teens aren’t spending their time socializing with strangers (only 5 percent say they have friends they only know from the Internet), 43 percent of poll participants said these social networking sites facilitated closer bonds.
This tidbit of information is great for the technically savvy, but what about moms, dads and grandparents? Is there a place for them on your Facebook friends list?
According to the Review staff’s unscientific poll, our parents, aunts, uncles and even grandparents are clicking their way onto social networking sites, and not only to keep in touch with their kin who are away at college. Much of the older generation may have started this way, but now they have friends, networks and photo albums of their own.
It all seems very exciting: families co-existing through various media outlets. But there are some people, probably more than will admit, living on the outskirts of the technological world. For all intensive purposes, let’s call them the tech-nos.
These tech-nos also desire inclusion. They have feelings to expose, photos to share, funny anecdotes to tell and messages to send. We don’t mean to exclude people who aren’t on our news feed, but it happens unintentionally.
So, instead of leaving the tech-nos in the dark, once in a while, come down to their level and give them a good, old-fashioned phone call. Heck, print off some of those photos from your Spring Break trip and show them around.
Crazy concept, we know.