A recent incident in Florida has created a great deal of controversy in both our country and others. Several Florida teens are being tried for the kidnapping and assault that placed 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay in the hospital with bruises, a concussion and damage to her left eye and ear, according to a huffingtonpost.com article. If convicted, some of the teens could be facing life sentences.

While Lindsay is expected to make a full recovery, the details of her assault are disturbing. Lindsay’s assailants were allegedly responding to some negative comments that Lindsay posted about them on the infamous myspace.com, planning to make a video to post on youtube.com. Parents across the country are now rallying in protest against sites like Myspace and YouTube, complaining that the internet is corrupting their children and teaching them to behave poorly and irrationally.

To declare this is the equivalent of declaring that Hershey should be held responsible for paying children’s dental bills after Easter. While it is true that many of these Web sites should develop better regulations of their content, to blame them for a child’s unacceptable behavior is unfair and unfounded.

Crime is nothing new. Lindsay easily could have made her comments in the middle of her school hallway and still have been assaulted afterwards. Sites like Myspace and YouTube may provide a more easily accessible method for people to sling insults and display acts of violence, but they did not create those acts in our society. For adults to blame the Internet for how their children behave is ridiculous. An adolescent’s knowledge of what is right and wrong is developed mainly from how the examples that are being set for him or her at home. It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children what is acceptable and to regulate the interaction that their child is having with others.

Obviously, parents cannot control every variable in their children’s lives, and incidents like these will occur despite the best parenting skills that can be offered. But it is often the case that they who are doing the most finger pointing are really the ones who should be evaluating themselves instead. While “trash-talking” someone on the Internet is immature, it is very common. But I and most of the people that I know would not respond to an electronic slur by kidnapping and beating the offender to a state of unconsciousness. It’s not because we don’t use the Internet; it’s because our parents instilled a higher level of morality and maturity in us.

It is the responsibility of the patron to recognize what is appropriate and what is not. Engaging in arguments online is never a good idea because the person to whom you are speaking cannot hear your tone of voice or see your facial expressions, which makes it very easy for your words to be misunderstood. Furthermore, arguing with someone in such a passive-aggressive manner is not only childish but ineffective to resolving the issue.

That being said, it doesn’t require much common sense to know that kidnapping and assault is an illegal and completely inappropriate response to any type of insult. Just because we see violent videos posted on the Internet does not give us a free pass to commit violent acts ourselves. It is the responsibility of those who raise us to teach us this and our responsibility to remember and respect it. Trying to direct the blame elsewhere only creates unnecessary squabbles that are little more mature or productive than the spats that generated the issue in the first place.