Why You Shouldn't Shoot Your Daughter???s Laptop (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | A few days ago, a troubled teen named Tammy Jordan posted a YouTube video. In it, she took a .45 pistol and shot holes into her dad's laptop, because she didn't like something her dad had written about her on Facebook. Her dad's post was privacy-protected, but being a tech-savvy teen she was easily able to find out about it, and exact her revenge.

Oops, sorry. It was actually the other way around. A man named Tommy Jordan didn't like what his daughter had written about him in a privacy-protected post, which he was somehow able to gain access to on Facebook because of his technical knowhow. Then he shot her laptop and posted the video on YouTube, along with a self-righteous, entitled rant about how his daughter has no right to privacy or to criticize him.

Here's why he shouldn't have.

Reason #1: Because of what it says about you

Jordan wasn't a reckless, irresponsible teenager, who'd somehow been given a gun. He was a cruel, power-mad adult, who'd somehow been given a gun and the authority to make another person's life miserable ... just because she's related to him, and her age is below the magic number 18.

See, his daughter told her friends, using Facebook (as opposed to the phone or old-fashioned talking in person), that she felt he was giving her too many chores. Because she had the audacity to think that her dad wasn't a creepy Internet stalker -- and that she could have private conversations with her friends, the same way she could have if she'd used the old-fashioned methods -- he decided to not just destroy a perfectly good laptop, but to publicly humiliate her as well.

According to the Daily Mail, the police thanked him. Of course, the police here in the United States also taser people to death and pepper spray unarmed protesters, so it's no surprise that they'd be on the side of excessive force and abuse of unearned power.

Reason #2: Because laptops make kids smarter

In Mooresville, North Carolina, just a few miles from Tommy Jordan's house, school-issued laptops are boosting kids' scores into the stratosphere, even as per-student spending is near the lowest in the state. According to Alan Schwartz of the New York Times, the graduation rate's up to 91 percent from 80 percent after just a few years of this.

It doesn't work the way you think it does, either. The computers aren't locked-down and monitored. Instead, there's a "culture of collaboration among staff and kids," according to Thomas Bertrand, the Rochester, IL school superintendent. Students are learning at their own pace, and using their computers the way they want to. That's what makes them so powerful.

Reason #3: Because kids need somewhere they can turn

If a supervisor did what Jordan did to an employee, there would be a lawsuit. And if a kid did it to another kid, it would be bullying, and a criminal act. The difference isn't that it was right or okay for Jordan to do this. The difference is that there are fewer legal protections for children who are bullied and have their conversations spied on and property destroyed by their parents. Especially when it involves computers, which uptight parents see as a threat to their authority and control.

They're right to be afraid of computers, for the same reason that governments from China to the Middle East see the Internet as a threat. Because if you're that kind of parent, your child can go online and realize that what happened to her was wrong, and does not happen in loving households. Your child can find out what real love and acceptance are and long for them, or even make plans to escape to them. Just like people in repressive countries, who find out about democracy.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120215/us_ac/10968834_why_you_shouldnt_shoot_your_daughters_laptop

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