This story has all the makings of a tragic soap: a vulnerable love sick teenager, a sick vengeful adult and death. Unfortunately this story is not confined to the pages of a book, but is a reality that took place in October 2006 and resulted in Megan Meier, aged 13 at the time, taking her own life. But why did she do it? What had happened before? Who caused it? And what does this have to do with technology?

It all started when Megan fell out with the daughter of her neighbor Ms Drew in St Louis, prompting Ms Drew to take it upon herself to spite Megan. She did this by creating a fictitious 16 year old boy, Josh Evans, who lived in the local area which she did by creating a fake MySpace account. This was then used to contact the unassuming Megan, and create a friendship, although the implication is that Megan believed it to be more serious than that. Contined . . .

The internet pornography industry is massive, of that there is no doubt, and the USA hosts 89% (244,661,900) of them. This is a staggering figure, and one that first points towards a degrading society, and then to what impact this is having on the children of today. Statistics show that the average age that a child first sees pornography on the internet is 11, and that within the 8-16 age bracket 90% of children have viewed porn online. So is it really surprising that children are putting naked photos of them selves online? Not really.