“A Gainesville teenager used an Internet conversation with an adult and some naked photographs to blackmail the man for hundreds of dollars… The teenager is accused of asking for nude photos of a 26-year-old Maryland man. After the adult e-mailed the photos, the teen told the man his true age and threatened him, saying if he didn’t send money the police would be notified. Based on e-mails investigators reviewed, Detective Jorge Campos said it appeared the man did not know he was dealing with a juvenile… The case, Campos said, is unique since it involves an adult victim and alleged juvenile culprit. Generally, the public hears about cases where adults have tricked children by developing computer relationships. But, he said, it matches those cases because, once again, a person offered private information to someone they met on the Internet.” — Gainesville Sun (US)

There are so many stories of adults using the internet to prey on teenagers and children that it is almost a relief to see the tables turned. Since the man did not realize he was dealing with a teenager, you don’t quite get that sense of poetic justice you would have had if the teen had been blackmailing a perverted pedo predator. But still, somehow this savvy young extortionist lends a possibility of balance to the system — albeit a balance based on a mutual ability for people to deceive, exploit, and abuse each other.

Moreover, given that teens tend to adapt to technology earlier than adults, and given that teens are often the ones to plunge heedlessly into whatever new social territories are opened up by technology, you can’t help but wonder if there will come a day when adults will be hard-pressed to defend themselves against malevolent scheming teens. “Cyber-predator” will no longer refer to child molesters prowling chat rooms, but rather to vicious adolescents using the internet to abuse their technologically unsophisticated elders. It will be like A Clockwork Orange: adults cowering in fear of anarchic “ultraviolent” teens — except that, whereas in the book and film teens rule the night, in reality they will end up ruling the net.

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