Teen social-networker 'tethered'

A 13-year-old in Detroit who lied about her age online and ran off with the 25-year-old man she lied to, was charged this week with "home truancy," the Detroit News reports. "Home truancy is considered a "status offense," or an offense where a crime is not committed, but where behavior of a minor warrants court action," the News explains. In this case, the court action includes requiring the 13-year-old to wear a tether (a GPS-enabled ankle strap) and stay off the Internet until her pre-trial hearing later this month. This is the first case I've seen in the news where tethering was applied to a Net-related runaway case. The Indiana man whom the girl "met" in MySpace "was freed Thursday morning from the Macomb County Jail after officials decided he did not commit a crime by driving the girl across Michigan." The girl had given his number to a girlfriend, who got worried and called the girl's mother, who called the police. Here's the Detroit Free Press's coverage. Cases like this certainly contribute to the "culture of fear" Reuters refers to in in "As freedom shrinks, teens seek MySpace to hang out" (also in the Washington Post).