Life can be extraordinarily coincidental at times. And not always in a serendipitous, dreamy folderol kind of way, writes Ailish Connelly.
For the last while, the big bad Bebo word has been bandied about in the media and I had no real reason to think too much of that social networking website, or any other one, one way or the other, except for hoping that my son, who is careering towards the teenage years, would ignore the whole web network phenomenon, lock, stock and cyberbarrel.
And continue to ignore it till he was about 25, living on his own and sufficiently bold enough to take care of and worry about himself.
Then a letter arrived home in his school bag, from the principal, addressed to all the parents, to the effect that there had been an incident of bullying on a Bebo site by pupils in his class and reported access by pupils to adult computer sites and could we please, as parents, sit up, pay attention and mostly, take action.
Mother of God! I mean, reading about it and hearing about it and even writing about it is one thing, but cyberbullying, in a class of 11- and 12-year-olds, is surely another thing entirely. I yearned to lie down in a dark room but I couldn't because I felt a steep learning curve coming on.
Most preteens and teens seem to be mad for Bebo, MySpace, MSN, YouTube and other social networking sites. They are the noughties way of showing yourself to the world.
I thought texting was their thing. Yes, MSN is the tool for that, where you can instant message your mates for free, provided you have internet access and an e-mail address. That's the beauty, the "free" bit. It's free with some mobile packages as long as you have an internet access phone, one which incidentally costs much more than other phones, or broadband.
On networking sites such as Bebo and the rest you can upload your digital photos from that weekend away, or, hilariously to you but worryingly to your parents, from the night you and your young buddies were legless in a ditch somewhere after a crate of Bacardi Breezers.
You can stamp your wildly interesting personality all over it. On YouTube you can video yourself and your mates on your new Prada mobiles and then broadcast yourself to the whole wide world, literally, as well as the world wide web.
The problem with all this activity is that it can be used with malicious and malign intent. How can you control what someone else is going to write about you on such a forum? How are you to know that it's a fellow 13-year-old on the other end of the ether and not some pervy old geezer looking for kicks? Does Bebo know for sure that members are who they say they are, the age they say they are and how do they police it?
Some teens I spoke to told me that Bebo recommends anyone under 21 keep their pages private, which means that only friends, no "randomers", can access a particular site. Anyone under 15 has to keep a site private, but what if a parent wants to access a site, to see for themselves exactly what's going on? Or what if a youngster accidentally leaves a site open, where anyone, and I mean anyone, from around the globe can have a good gawk for themselves at your innocent antics in the Gaeltacht.
Mothers tell me kids seem clueless that undesirables could be accessing their sites.
Another concern is that inappropriate content once uploaded is online forever, accessible for future employers who might not be too impressed that the impeccable interviewee sitting demurely before them liked to get down and dirty - and video it all for posterity - at the tender age of 16.
I have seen some genuinely funny and harmless YouTube uploads such as "121 shirtless men go shopping in Abercrombie and Fitch", but there was news recently of some young Irish idiots who filmed one of their friends lying between train tracks, yes, train tracks, while a train passed overhead. The lads fell around the place laughing after the event. Of course, potential maiming, mutilation and death is side-splittingly funny, lads.
There are regular reports of the insane practice of boy racers filming each other pursuing their deadly, dangerous hobby. Through a site such as YouTube, testosterone-pumped idiots can parade their dubious achievements and perhaps persuade a younger YouTube surfer to kill or injure himself copying them.
Then there is that tragic case in Missouri, US, where a girl called Megan Meier committed suicide after an incident of cyberbullying on MySpace.
Her tormentor turned out to be the mother of an ex-friend. She assumed an online alias as a 16-year-old boy, befriended the 13-year-old Megan, then turned on her, telling her on her message board that "he" heard she was a bad friend. Megan hanged herself after a series of messages on her MySpace board.
Because of negative publicity a few years ago, Bebo claims to have cleaned up its act regarding online bullying. If bullying is reported, Bebo staff check on its veracity and close the account. But by then, one would assume the damage has been done.
These sites are goldmines, money machines that have the lucrative advertisers' audience of teens and twentysomethings.
Bebo, YouTube, RateMyTeacher and other sites have been widely criticised by parents, teachers and teachers' unions for invasion of privacy issues as well as incidents of predators, bullying and inappropriate content; but most responsibility, as my son's principal would surely say, lies with the parents.
Maybe it's all Andy Warhol's fault, him and his 15 minutes of fame. The technology wasn't around in his heyday but with the invention of the net, everyone who wants to can be somebody, famous for 30 seconds.
Fifteen minutes is stretching it these days, a good two minutes of video upload on YouTube might be enough to guarantee you fame or infamy. Whether you understand the difference now or might still want it in 10 years' time is the thing.