If this whole story is true to how it's been presented, then this was a mess from the start. If it wasn't this guy it was going to be another. She was
seeking and enjoying the attention, she said so in her note.

Many people don't stop those sort of thrills at that age until they come face to face
with the unintended consequences. Sometimes it's pregnancy... in this case it was a jerk and the world.
I think many parents are utterly and/or willfully oblivious to what their teenagers are actually doing on their computers. The generation gap of tools
teens use (and more importantly how) that some parents won't touch for a year... it's not just a matter of the teens being sneaky, the parents don't
even realize some things are *possible*.
Like the dad who bought the Kinect for his 360 without giving thought to what sort of random people might pop on camera. It's not that he's stupid, he
just didn't grow up in a world with that model thinking on by default. So he's unlikely to go down that train of thought as automatically as he would
regarding fears of letting his kid trick or treat in public alone.
Parents need to stop thinking this is a rare thing. They also need to realize much of it is voluntary (at least initially) in the same way they
probably snuck peeks when they were teenagers. Sometimes it went public "back then" too, sometimes it didn't. The difference now is the tools make it
easier to do the peeks more "discretely" but also more easily recorded without the person realizing it.
Then distributed planet wide within
minutes.
Many parents have just never had to *deal* with something of that potential scale in that short of time happening to them personally, and would
probably have to ask their teen to tell them how to "disable it". But only after they hear of it from the TV, CNN.com, the gym, etc. and it's already
old news to the teenager. They are already using a new program, service, device, or whatever thing their parents still haven't heard of.
edit
on 16-10-2012 by ErgoTheConclusion because: (no reason given)