Yesterday, federal prosecutors indicted Lori Drew (the "MySpace Mom") on four counts, including "one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl" (CNN): 

"I know that they did not physically come up to our house and tie a belt around her neck," Tina says. "But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old - with or without mental problems - it is absolutely vile.” (Tina Meier to The St. Charles Journal, regarding what happened to her daughter, Megan Taylor Meier) Tina and Ron Meier of O'Fallon, Mo., mourn their daughter, Megan. In 2006, while her mother prepared family dinner, Megan hung herself with a belt in her bedroom closet after being tormented on MySpace, the victim of cyberbullying and a prank so heinous that it's turned some bloggers and Net readers into a "cyber lynch mob."

The social network thing is still something I'm trying to wrap my brain around. Maybe I'm not alone. While millions of people spend hours a day in these virtual "communities," I wonder if any of us can have the perspective to really grok what's happening ... to us, to our culture, to our media, to our lives. Time marches on, and what today looks like tomorrow is something about which we can only guess.