Parents Evade Responsibility, Shifting it to Twitter

The so-called "news" is seemingly thrilled to blame-shift to Elon

I saw this story in the

Disaffected Newsletter

Discord server from @Brently sharing it. This story and how it is written is basically everything wrong with our society today, the desire of parents to not be responsible for their children and the desire of them and news to shift that responsibility and blame to someone else.

If you give your responsibility to take care of something to someone else to take care of it, you become a willful slave to whether that person takes care of it or not. I say “slave” because you have no power when you give your responsibility to take care of something to someone else. I say “willful” because you could always take that responsibility right back if you wanted to.

These parents, Heather and Ken McConney, had the responsibility to care for their son. They chose to give that responsibility to Discord, Roblox, Twitter, Apple, and parental blocking programs. The article states, “Her teenage son was apparently being groomed on apps she thought were safe for children.” The emphasis is mine. She thought they were safe. Why did she think that? Had she studied up on it? Had she taken the responsibility to do a search such as, “Is Roblox safe for children?”

I just decided to search that and one of the top results says plainly, “As with any other platform that has user-generated content and an in-game chat feature, there’s always the chance that kids can run into inappropriate content while playing. This can include profanity, sexual content, drugs/alcohol, and more. The games themselves are often similar to mainstream video games, with simulated violence (players can kill and be killed). There’s also the chance of children messaging with potentially predatory adults, though that risk may be minimal thanks to the parental controls we’ll talk about in the next section.”

Some of those controls include monitoring conversations. It’s clear if the mother was monitoring the conversations (which would have been her responsibility) she could have nipped this in the bud. But, the original story goes on to say, “When her son started gravitating toward online games, she tried to watch his behavior as much as she could. When he started to use the computer more and became isolated, she chalked it up to teenage moodiness.”

If you notice a change in your son’s behavior, wouldn’t that be a sign to look into what he’s been up to? Why do parents feel so comfortable giving the responsibility to care for their children to these platforms rather than taking personal responsibility? I have to guess it’s part laziness, part being overwhelmed (she supposedly did “as much as she could”), part brainwashing, and maybe part personality disorder. We are simply supposed to take the writer’s word that she did as much as she could, which I highly doubt. The writer is likely taking the mother’s word for it, but their responsibility as a journalist should also be to push back and ask if that’s the case. I personally think the “journalist” desired to write a piece blaming Elon.

So, after learning their child had been kidnapped, they started investigating. The conversations had started on Discord and Roblox but moved to Twitter. The article continues:

“Twenty-five days before the abduction, police sent a search warrant to Twitter to learn more information about the man police believe was grooming the teen. But they misspelled the username.

When the police corrected the error several weeks later, Twitter did not immediately respond, police said.”

The parents had also placed responsibility for finding their child on the police, as most would. The father said, “I just assumed, and obviously incorrectly, that law enforcement was going to take over and ensure that nothing’s gonna happen.” But, when you give that responsibility to incompetent people, you become a slave to their incompetence.

The father did realize that the law enforcement were not ensuring nothing bad would happen. But the parents still shift responsibility onto Twitter. The rest of the article is basically on why Elon messed up and Twitter cannot protect kids.

The article says, “For Heather, Twitter’s involvement has become a focal point. Heather questioned whether or not Musk’s chaotic takeover of the platform and the sizable layoffs he enacted at the company might have potentially slowed down how quickly the company could respond to law enforcement requests.”

The delay wouldn’t have anything to do with giving the wrong username to the company, would it?

“They said, Twitter and law enforcement failed to effectively intervene despite an abundance of information posted online. They’re demanding answers.

‘I need to move forward and figure out what the hell happened,’ Heather said. ‘Where did the ball get dropped?’”

The mother asks where the ball got dropped, while knowing that she thought her son was just being moody, then discovering the texts, taking away the phone, and realizing her son had sent a geolocation pin to their house to the perp. Her son found another phone and used that. Also, he was using a Meta Quest virtual reality (VR) headset to access Twitter. When you take away something from an addict, don’t you normally scour the house for other similar items to make sure the child can’t have access to it?

The child was abused. This is horrible. But it’s not Twitter’s fault. Twitter has been getting rid of illegal child endangerment stuff at a rate higher than before Elon bought the company. The parents, understandably, feel responsible (in my opinion) and are trying to shift that responsibility outward because of their fragile egos.

If the mother, Heather, has a bug in her bonnet about Elon, I would bet she sees him as a “persecutor.” But she’s placed herself as a slave to him. She is a slave of Elon because she has given him the responsibility for her child’s well-being. Was it worth it?

The “news” media is only happy to agree with her and focus on what Twitter did wrong, rather than hold the parents up to those standards. The media likes to say Elon is a “persecutor” also and we’re all simply victims who need to be protected from him owning Twitter and letting it go to crap, right?

Do you feel like a victim? Do you think it’s Twitter’s responsibility to make sure your child doesn’t get sexually assaulted? Yes, Twitter has a responsibility to get rid of illegal material and accounts, but they’ve shown to be better at it since Elon’s takeover. But there’s only so much Twitter can do to stop a predator.

When the family knew that their child had sent a geolocation tag to a child predator, they didn’t take the necessary steps to ensure no one could take the child out of the house. Heather believes her own son was likely the one who wiped the security footage.

The child was addicted to talking to this predator, and why do you suppose that is? The parents were not emotionally connecting to their son. They gave that responsibility up when they left him to simply be “moody.” They gave that responsibility for his emotional state to a predator and then blamed everyone else but themselves.

These are the kinds of people who want Twitter to have more control over what you say and do because they think it’s the company’s responsibility to make us safe. True safety and power come from taking personal responsibility, not passing off that responsibility to people who you think are incompetent.

At the end of the story, it says the boy now “has a phone — but it’s not connected to the internet and can’t download social media applications.”

Why wasn’t this done in the first place? Or the second place when they found out he was addicted to talking to a predator? Why wait around and let this horrible thing happen in the first place? They didn’t think that was their responsibility. They didn’t realize the consequences of letting go of the responsibility for raising a child.

If the parents had taken some responsibility in the first place this never would have happened. We don’t need others to save us. We can take responsibility for ourselves. We need to stop shifting that responsibility onto companies or a government to take care of us.