But as several recent news items attest, there's no way to keep them away from the Internet which may have an unparalleled capacity for making mischief. Y oung male aggression is as predictable as puberty. But every culture in human history has needed a way to channel youthful aggression. Ours is to hand over technology that can wreak havoc. I'm not speaking of guns, but of the Internet.
Guns are bad enough, but the Internet is an angry boy's dream come true.
Ask the 18 year-old Israeli who broke into the Pentagon's computer system. Or the young Filipinos who, angry at the price of Internet access, launched a virus that caused untold millions of dollars in damages. And although it's remotely possible to imagine a world without guns, almost no one can conceive of a world without the Internet. Cyber pranks are deliciously devious. Their style of aggression is one that far predates the Internet, substitutes imagination for brute force, and holds out hope of avoiding detection.