In recent months seventeen teenagers have hanged themselves in the area around the small borough of Bridgend in South Wales, UK. Why they did it remains unanswered and is baffling the nation.

In America the phenomenon of high school kids shooting up their campuses, then turning the guns on themselves, probably comes from the same root cause.

The police say they were not all members of any web-based suicide cult, although a few of them may have used the chatrooms. They didn’t all know each other either, and didn’t constitute a group or gang. So what is happening here?

Bridgend is a rather nice area, surrounded by glorious countryside, including the Vale of Ogmore and Merthyr Mawr, a wild place of sand dunes and beaches. It’s also near to the upmarket Vale of Glamorgan, a wealthy patch of rolling, green hills and country pubs. There are many worse places to live.

They did all have one thing in common though. Like all modern teenagers they were immersed in social networking sites — Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Their inner space was formed by the anarchistic conversations of mainly unknown “friends” made on these addictive sites. No settled discourse this, but a 24/7 babble of wildly differing opinions, rants and life objectives, generously sprinkled with bizarre fantasies incapable of fulfilment in the real world.

And there’s the crunch — “the real world”. It really is a second life on these sites, bearing little resemblance to the day to day concerns of older people. That, of course, is their attraction.

The sites’ main competitor is “the real world”, that space of dismal state schooling; urgent demands on climate change of which we are ingenuously presented as the main cause; the breakdown of our ethical system and its replacement with social Marxism (political correctness and obsessive equality) and the bureaucratic autism of the governing class.

The world they look out on is one of cynical politicians on the make, advertisements that make them crave objects they know they don’t really need, and an adult generation that has allowed chaos to reign. The idealism of youth is quickly spent.

Add to all that, mass immigration and the introduction of cruel medieval practices, gang culture, knife crime and drug-based gun law, and the Britain they live in no longer has the moral or physical authority to demand their loyalty.

Teenagers today like nothing better than to “get wrecked” — hopelessly drunk — most nights of the week. Without boundaries to make sense of their lives, or any compelling lodestar to guide them, modern youth sinks into the apparent benign world of social networking.

The outer world gives them nothing but information-overload characterized by countless pressure groups competing for their attention with contradictory messages and injunctions. Good parents get drowned out, as do decent teachers. Even the government is now just one voice among many, chopping and changing its empty slogans on a daily basis. Thought anarchy rules the lives of young people, an unpleasant environment for mental development to take place.

So, social networking they go. The problem is, it has a very thin actuality. Quickly they discover it hasn’t the substance to satisfy their need for experience and the challenges that promote growth of character and individuality. They are trapped in a no-man’s land between a wafer-thin second life and an unbearable jungle of squabbling claim and counter-claim in the world itself. No wonder many are taking their own lives.

Social networks can be dangerous places to be if you are immature and seeking experiences that should come from life itself.

You know you’ve made it when the competition walks in terror of your objectives.

Attila the Hun as depicted by the BBC

If you generate real fear in your space, you’ve achieved the status of Attila the Hun, who terrorized the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.

Who is the 21st century’s online version of the bloodthirsty Hun? Google, of course : the “Do no evil” search giant which can be surprisingly heavy-handed in defence of its own interests.

Microsoft has clearly given up on its solitary attempts to challenge the unchallengable, and has been seeking to swallow other stragglers to redress the position.

It should heed the old warning, though : “You are what you eat”.

Yahoo is refusing the toothsome embrace of the software king and is now in talks with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but escaping the clutches of one Great White Shark only to fall longingly into the jaws of another, doesn’t seem like a very good strategy to me. But what do I know?

The two sides are apparently in discussions about merging MySpace and News Corporation’s other online properties with Yahoo. News Corp would get a stake of more than 20pc in the internet company.

The deal would help the Murdoch corporation fight back against the growing dominance of Google’s internet search business. There’s that name again.

Last year, Rupert Murdoch said: “We’ve got to find new ways and new business models to get revenues. Or else the world is going to be owned by Google.”

He has made no secret of the fact that he views attacking Google’s dominance as the key to internet progress for his businesses.

The deal would also leave Microsoft without a growth strategy. The Redmond softies have been desperately trying to make their mark in the online world after seeing their software and operating systems business deliver little value to shareholders in recent years.

A News Corp-owned Yahoo would give Murdoch an established news platform online and, under the terms being discussed, would leave Yahoo essentially independent to take the fight to both Google and Microsoft.

Somehow, I see Google surviving that, but Microsoft may have nowhere to hide — online at least.

The Wall Street Journal — now Murdoch owned — is calling the value of MySpace at between $6bn and $10bn. A spokeswoman for Yahoo said last night, “Our board is continuing to carefully and thoroughly evaluate its strategic options and is committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all stockholders.”

One can’t help thinking that somewhere in the background, watching like a hawk, is the wily Attila. This time though he’s running out of options. Anti-Trust laws are likely to limit Google’s room for manoeuvre.

Attila was finally caught up with and defeated by a superior Roman General leading a coalition of tribes pushed aside by the Hun. They included Saxons, Franks and Celts.

Are sufficient forces now gathering that will see off the internet’s own version of Attila?

Maybe not this time. But fall he will. History is implacable on that.

I’m often asked what I think of social networking sites, especially the big three, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. In a nutshell, “Life’s too short”.

We don’t do rants here at Syntagma, so that limits my response somewhat. However, there’s a gross and witty piece over at The Register by Otto Z. Stern, “a director at The Institute of Technological Values — a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age”.

Otto definitely speaks for me — although minus some of his more gruesome analogies.

So zip over to El Reg for Syntagma’s less than polite opinions on the current state of social networking : “Beware the populist mash oozing out of Facebook and YouTube”.

And I didn’t even mention Twitter.