Get your kids off Facebook, principal tells parents

I have barely come to terms with the idea that someone at a school thought it appropriate, wise, or even sane to spy on kids via Webcams on school-issued laptops. Has technology really taken over human thought processes quite so much?

So I temporarily lost the ability to spell my own name when I was confronted with the rather heartening news that a school principal has asked parents to get their kids away from Facebook and any other social-networking site.

I don't know whether the emission of a show called "Jersey Shore" has enlivened school principals to the idea of imminent social doom, but Anthony Orsini, principal of the Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J., is clearly concerned about the children his school is accommodating.

For he wrote an e-mail to parents asking them to be socially responsible by getting their kids away from Facebook, MySpace, and every other heinously gratuitous social-networking site.