I'm admittedly writing a response to the title, and haven't read the article yet - i will read the article and come back though, but..

I'm a big fan of "free range parenting". I'm all about kids having unsupervised time alone at age/maturity appropriate times. I'm ok and supportive of them having "their world".

I am like this even though.. these things allowed me as a child to run with some truly awful people, and experience some things (and get into things) no child should be getting into. But i like to tell myself, i was attracted to the wrong things because my constructive interests were never encouraged at home (b/c my parents couldn't relate to them if it wasn't football or Jesus), b/c my home was physically and emotionally abusive, and because i lived in a neighborhood full of homes far worse than my own. Combine that with getting bullied in elementary school - mainly b/c my mother was happy to smother me at those ages and i was this big sissy momma's boy who didn't fit in.. and i naturally gravitated to the alienated, the troubled, and what i consider the 'underdogs'.

My big worry- as an tech minded person, is how everything now is online. And how our privacy is just an illusion. Between zero-tolerance policies in the educational system, cops that can't just give stern warnings to mischievous kids doing something stupid and taking them home to their parents - but rather charge them with crimes combined with the fact that "the internet is forever" - and your follies can affect future relationships, future jobs, college admissions, not to mention can be used to publicly shame you, blackmail you (considering what it is), and just destroy you.. i honestly don't know how to feel ok with my child having a space i can't control.

i did, and said some fucked up shit as a kid.

With a bigot for a father always whispering in my ear about how everything publci school, black history month, rap music and movies taught me about "racism" was wrong, and then getting my ass beat by a gun-toting black dude for talking to his girl (i didn't know!) in a mall, followed by several other incidents... i went through a racist phase for about a year or two.

In college i participated on Adult Friend Finder, to find couples to participate in group sex with.

I've openly talked on forums about my youthful hardcore drug use.

And yes, these things have come back to bite me, but not as bad as they could have.

My generation was the last to not grow up entirely connected. We had dial up. So school bullying didn't follow me home on social networks, and if i did something wrong, unethical or embarrassing - it was allowed to be ephemeral.

The permanence of our actions and words has never been what it is today.

The litigious, liability driven society - not to mention social voyeurism, has never existed in the way it does today. Not to the extent. Consequences for children are heftier than ever before.

Now off to read the article