MERRITT ISLAND, Florida —When two-year-old Bryson Ross drowned in the backyard pool of this home on Monday, his mom Shellie was online and "tweeting" about his death within minutes. Ross sent a routine tweet at 5:22 p.m.; she called 911 at 5:38.
About a half hour later, at 6:12, she tweeted: "Please pray like never before... my two year old fell in the pool."
"That may be the way that she communicates primarily with the world, said psychologist Kathleen McHugh, adding that with today's technology, some people are becoming as attached to the cyber-world as the real world.
"It wouldn't be unusual to communicate a major event in her life, and that might be what we're looking at," McHugh said.
Reaction on the Internet has gone viral. Twitter's site has exploded with comments, most of them supportive. But on news sites like Florida Today, Shellie Ross is getting hammered.
Conspiracy Guy-One wrote: "She was posting on Twitter as the EMT's were trying to revive her son. That's not grieving, that's screwed up."
Palomino said: "Maybe instead of twittering and blogging, she should have been watching her son."
But Soccermom-30 fired back at the critics: "It only takes a second for a child to get away no matter how much you keep your eye on them. Where are your children right now while you are on the computer?"
"It does take us a while as a society to sort of accept new ways of communication," McHugh said. "If you think about it, just a few years we used to criticize people who were on their cell phones a lot."
