I guess we have to accept that the way the Net works means it can be used as a tool for the "darker side" of life as well as a tool for the many good things - just as all methods of human communication can do this.  But somehow the immediacy of the Net and the way it comes right into our homes without regulation gives it a special place on the list of concern.  Mobile phones are somewhat similar.
 
I occasionally receive emails intended for a Heather - I suspect a Heather Whitehead somewhere on ntlworld - a girl who I suspect is about 13 or 14 and many of these emails are clearly intended to bully and upset her.  Thank God she doesn't get them. Schoolgirls can be cruel and for all I know Heather is as nasty to these other girls as they are to her!  Nonetheless it is disturbing to see email used in this way.  I guess if the Net didn't exist they would resort to the kind of giggly abusive telephone calls that my sister used to get from bullies, so it's not the Net that is the problem but the way people use it.
 
However, it's the very pervasiveness of email and the Net that makes one see a lot more of the darker side of life than one would otherwise see.  There is NO other way that I would have been OBLIGED to view pornography (until I finally was forced to turn off all images in my email - so now don't bother sending me your art or logo or a JPG flyer for your event because I won't see it...).  This darker side of life - the people who are using the Internet for porn, scams, viruses, spam, mean that I am applying more and more restrictions to my own use (let alone my children's!), for my own sanity. And that has made me retreat into my safe little areas, and has lost me that feeling of "connectedness" that was so glorious about the early Internet.
 
As someone who runs a children's writing website, I see a huge amount of abusive messages - messages that have been airily sent into the ether by 10-14 year olds usually (OK some of them are pretending to be that age - but most actually ARE). The content of the abuse that some children (!) can direct at a complete stranger on an innocuous website is breathtaking and often makes me feel so sick that I can't continue editing (because to keep these children safe - mostly from themselves! - I moderate every single submission).  I guess the teachers get it in person every day - what heroes they are!  Partly because of this volume of abuse, the website is likely to close to submissions this year after 8 years online.
 
I think it is very dangerous that people with damaging perversions or criminal intentions can find others like themselves and start to feel normal and validated - this was much more difficult before the Internet.
 
So can this great human communication tool that is the Internet ever be rescued for good?  Honestly I am beginning to doubt it.
 
Helen


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