6) Disagreements with article 2

The author of this article enters into the relationship of 16 young girls and their identities online. An article which i found very interesting. However, do you think that it is a bad thing to look in to someones identity too much? This article was not suggesting that these girls were interacting through 'bad' activity, by bad i mean being a paedophile etc., however, it was saying how they were pretending to be someone who they weren't - experimenting. It stated that:

• 'one had switched race (i.e., Mia, who was part Chinese, part White-Jewish, pretended to be blonde and blue eyed);
• two had switched sexuality (by becoming heterophobicgay men);
• four had become beings with supernatural powers (two half-vampires, one demon, and one who could “disappear in a puff of purple smoke”);
• and five had switched their gender.'

To me, these identities seem quite harmful, and in addition don't you feel that being able to express and experiment yourself in a different way on the inet, without having to be faced with bullying and teasing for doing it offline, is a good thing? Indeed, Turkle did say ''computers are not just changing our lives but changing our selves.' however in case's like this, one could argue that computers are not just changing our lives, but also giving us the ability to experiment with our selves. Computers, therefore can enable us to experiment with identities before we try them out offline.