Facebook, founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, has 48% of 18-34 year olds checking their personal profiles right when they wake up and 28% on their smart phones before getting out of bed in the morning. Youth today, live in the 24/7 ‘digital world’ and it practically affects every aspect of their lives, whether they post photos of themselves or of their peers and/or decide to make fun of others, they will eventually end up emotionally affected, however teens don’t always “…self-censor online…”.
You would easily find people of all ages on different social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Bebo and more. Yet our children become vulnerable they want to be part of the ‘fast paced’ world, keeping up with what is cool and what’s not.
In saying that it is easy to manipulate the system, where our under age children can easily make a profile without their parents knowing giving out private and personal information such as their phone number, home address and publically posting photos. As easily as a child can fool the system, without any difficulties a potential predator could create a ‘fake profile’ and use interests similar to that of the child to lure him/her into danger.
Among the rapid transformation in technology, social networking sites are in danger. With a numerous amount of scams and scammers on social networking sites you must be extra cautious. For example 'Phishing' is an fake email sent to someone posing as an organization/persons that actually contains a link that gives the hacker access to your password and account putting you in danger.
Cyber Bullying/Youth Suicide
Facebook and Twitter are seen as an all-important part of life for millions but people forget is the permanent devastation they can cause to an individual with just a click of a button.
The social networking sites allow individual profiles to be created which easily gives someone the momentum to create ‘anonymity’ thus begin targeting others, posting hurtful comments. Social media harassment is said to be the “…background factor in suicides…” where New Zealand was found to have the second highest overall death rate of young people aged 10-24 on that account majority of these deaths had links to “cyber-bulling”.
‘Cyber-bulling’ has taken bullying to a whole other level, because there is no face-to-face action the shackles of responsibility have been removed and adolescents become bolder. Things are said/posted online without being thought through hence has negative outcomes such as depression or worse, death.
According to BBC article “How dangerous are networking sites” a women was accused of bulling a 13 year old into committing suicide. Yes, teenagers are not only the victims and vultures of ‘cyber-bullying’, adult can be just as cruel. They are often referred to as ‘internet trolls’ someone who purposely put together agitating posts on social networks, but the abuse does not stop there, tribute pages are also
overflowing with numerous hate comments produced by these ‘internet trolls’
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