The Internet Can Kill

Courtroom footage is available for this story for license and/or purchase from the IN SESSION archives – click here.

By Kristal Hawkins

Warnings and Advice

Dead: two children and one woman. Imprisoned: three men who were directly involved in murder. Implicated: the Internet sites where they talked, vented, plotted. At risk: all of us, and our children, whether we're on the streets or in front of our computers.

Makeshift memorial for Jamie Rose Bolin

In person or online, the world is a dangerous place. People are not always what they seem. A quiet reserve may mask a troubled, nefarious soul. A person may be naïve or manipulative—or both at once, in a way that confuses them and us. Or behind the name and words on a screen there may not be a single individual at all.

If the world were a simpler place, these stories would lead to a list of warning signs to spot trouble for or from your children by monitoring their behavior online and offline. Things aren't that easy. We can merely monitor our children, ourselves, each other, and know that our electronic world of the future is every bit as bright and bleak as our fleshly past and present one.