Age Restrictions On Social Media

Finally, there is nothing easier or faster than making connections with someone who you knew long time ago through social media. Many social media sites are being created regularly that allow people to connect and interact over the Internet. However, the advancement of today’s social media has also increased the activities of pedophiles due to the communication that social media allows. Online predators have gained access to youngsters, ever since people started using social media extensively. According to Fox News, “The world’s largest pro-pedophilia advocacy group uses Facebook to connect with its members throughout the world; to find and exchange photos of children; to hone its members' predatory behaviour; and to identify,

In Queensland, over the past three years (as at 2011) more than 450 child pornography charges have been laid against youths between the ages of 10 and 17, including 113 charges of "making child exploitation material". In January, two West Australian boys - one 15 and the other 16 - were reportedly placed on the state's sex offender registry after they were caught engaging in group sex with a girl, 14. A third boy was also listed as a sex offender after using his mobile phone to film the incident, with the intention of online distribution. (Tin,2011) It should be further noted that the age of consent of social accounts such as Facebook and Instagram do not conform with the Australian consensual age of 16, which are put in place to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse. (Child Family Community Australia, 2014) Thus proving it difficult for the legal system to offer relevant aid. The exploitation of children has been inadvertently enhanced by the availability of the internet. (Cdpp.gov.au, 2015) and further, this ‘digital age’ has created new vulnerabilities that are quick to be

Social media has captivated young and adult equally, but young kids are more vulnerable to the negative effects of social media. In the essay writing by Peggy Orenstein, she is troubled by the way young boys and girls are submerged in the cyberspace. She found that places like Facebook or twitter can affect the developing personality of young kids. These kids are more likely to suffer from bulling, to engage in a sexual relationship sooner and with an older person, be the victims of sexual assaults and be self-center. Without being aware of the power of social media, I started using social media since 1996; while I was going to college in the Dominican Republic. I used to go to the computer center during my free time and signed into a

According to the Australian Institute of Criminology (2009) the US found half of the surveyed participants, both male and female aged 12 to 17 used social media. Having social media being a big part of children’s lives, makes it exceptionally easy for offenders to target their victims. In 2006 the Youth Internet Safety Survey found that over half of the children participating in the survey had been affected by some form of sexual harassment, and exposure to unwanted sexual material online (AIC 2009). As child grooming is mainly performed on the Internet, it is considered a worldwide problem (AIC 2009). With the use of crime theories, the crime of child grooming will be further explained using the social learning and routine activity theory.

Online predators and Stalkers can easily gain access to social media users’ personal information by either requesting to be a user’s friend or simply finding a way around the user's privacy settings. According to June Ahn, chat rooms are public and is an unmonitored space where online predators are more likely to be. “Adolescents are less likely to be targeted for unwanted sexual solicitation in social media than chat rooms.”(Ahn, June) I have found that, 412 adolescents were more likely to talk with strangers. This is hazardous for young children and adolescents because their lack of life experience leads them to blindly accept all friend request. The effort to seem popular by having many friends online can damage credibility and truth worthiness.

It is not uncommon for someone to exaggerate the truth or to leave out facts about themselves on the web. In fact, you may even find that the person you thought you knew on the internet is nothing like their profiles in real life. Whether it is to stand out in the crowd or to fool someone into thinking you are someone else entirely, you should not believe everything you see or read online. With photo enhancements, little white lies, and the scam termed catfishing, you just never really know who you are talking to or what their intentions are. Michele Fleming and Debra Rickwood, authors of “Teens in Cyberspace”, determine that parents and the public share the concern of teens encountering predators and pedophiles on the internet and could lead to inappropriate relationships on and off the web. The young generation typically communicates with peers and people close in age, however, Fleming and Rickwood advise “Even though many teens appear Net-savvy, they still need to be reminded of the potential dangers lurking online. There may be many friends in cyberspace but there are undoubtedly a number of

One of the main hazards that Social Networking can bring is Sexual Predators. Vicki Haddock a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle believes, “the internet was once seen as a Golden information superhighway” (Document C). In which people were able to see the next generation of what was called the promise

The issue of sex offenses being committed using social media sites, such as Facebook, is a growing issue in today’s society. This research is designed to determine whether an average Facebook user believes the social media site is used as an avenue for committing sex offenses. In order to conduct the research analysis there will be a Qualtrics survey given to 113 social media users in the Treasure Valley. The survey questions will be based on previous research that has shown demonstrating chances of a sexual predator committing a sexual offense while using Facebook. The results from the survey will be compared to the literature research to understand if an average Facebook users participated in the survey have the potential to conduct acts similar to an online sexual predator. This is based on analysis from the ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) task force stating some sex offenders use the privacy and anonymity of the internet to prey on children and teenagers that have unsupervised access to the internet (Hagan, 2010). Present research also focuses on sexual and cyber behavior to understand the psychology behind using manipulation and other tactics to lure underage victims into meeting in person. The importance of the research is to determine whether there is a relationship between the use of Facebook and committing sex offenses. Literature on social media fantasy is used to analyze how different personas are created, and an altered reality is lived by the

The article was written by Diana Graber on December 8, 2014. This article was written to show why age restrictions on social media matter. Diana’s audience is parents of children of why they should wait until the age limit of certain social media sites. Diana’s article gave insight on why age matters when it comes to your kids having a social media account. The article is about a girl named Rebecca and the study of children and social media. Rebecca was just twelve years old when she decided to end her life due to cyberbullying. The victim and the two bullies were underage using social media. The story shows that both the victim and the bullies were not ready to have a social media account. Rebecca's bullying took place on Facebook, Ask.fm,

Every 4 out of 5 minors do not utilize privacy settings on their social media. Meaning their accounts are completely open to the public and entirely accessible to complete strangers. It is a very taboo topic to talk about but sex offenders can be stalking and waiting on any minor social media. Many minors tend to share anything and close to everything about their lives on their social media. Due to this fact most of them do not apply privacy settings whilst oversharing and posting personal information, giving enormous amounts of access to these sexual predators, therefore putting these minors at great risk. Although , there are some minors that use social media appropriately and properly. But, even those few Instagram accounts or tumblr blogs that belong to minors do seem to be used exactly the way they should be, they still aren’t being smart. There are famous blogs and youtube channels belonging to minors that are plastered all over the internet. These minors are not being completely safe. They are sharing and posting some very personal information to their 24K followers with no regard to practicing safety at

Over four years only 24 percent of fourteen to seventeen year olds have said they had participated in sending naked photos, while only 33 percent of eighteen to twenty four year olds had reported (Hudson, Heather K., 2011), but due to the 91 percent of children aged thirteen to seventeen that have a device that allows them to access the internet (PewResearchCenter, 2013), parents are panicking. The paranoia is resulting in parents requesting the passwords to their children’s devices and social media accounts, installing apps that limit and control what their child is doing online, and parents believing online stories about ‘secret messages’. Apps such as ‘Bark’ (Bark Technology, 2017) allow parents to be notified when it detects any inappropriate or harmful behaviour. There also multiple other apps that parents have access to if they are worried about their teenager’s social media activity. There are also “guides to sexting” (Independent, 2017) which parents use to “decode” their children’s text messages. For example, ‘WTTP’ apparently stands for “want to trade pictures?”. Parents are exaggerating sexting as an issue that is a lot more common and breaking boundaries of trust between them and their

A common danger correlating with social media are sexual predators. In the growing years, accessing social media to kidnap teenagers has increased. Alicia Kozlowski was just 14 when she was abducted by a sexual predator. The aggressor had approached Alicia through AIM, a popular social media messaging site in the early 2000’s, and encouraged her to meet him at an abandoned spot. Unfortunately, cases like

Checking the news, keeping up with friends, and sharing quips of witty posts of a hundred and forty characters or less are the normal things for anybody to do while using a social media network. With ages ranging from the very young to the old, therein lies an assimilation of individuals whose information, location, and almost anything else are within their profile, just far enough away to keep the average stalker at bay, but close enough for a person with immoral intents to reach out and simply snatch. As the article, “Social Networking” observes, “…as Internet socializing grows, so do fears that the practice exposes the vulnerable – especially young people – to sexual predators” (627). Sexual predators are not the only people prowling around the Internet, for the range of criminals run the gamut, from potential murderers to vicious kidnappers, with their greatest weapon being something nearly everyone has access to in this modern era. Thus, through social media platforms, alone, these websites contain the information of millions upon millions of unique individuals, where, sometimes, it is as simple as scrolling down to select someone to hack into next. Often enough, these Internet forums are places where even a high school kid can do some damage, but not in the form of using personal information for selfish

Children are often seen as immature and incapable of making good decisions, and therefore are thought to not be able to have social media. While there may be some truth to that, we must keep in mind that they are only as mature as they are raised to be. A news story released in 2011 talks about a 13 year old girl who was abducted by a 46 year old man she had met online who she believed to be 15 years old. It was later released that both her mother and her father had no clue that she was even on the social media site where she met the man and had never even cared to check up on her activities since they were hardly ever present in her life anyways. Because she was never raised to know any better, this horrible incident occurred. While this does occur rarely to

Just as there are positive effects of social media, there are also negative effects as well. False connections are often made on SNS. Ninety percent of students have Facebook which is constructed to be socially shared with any user. It may seem obvious that users of social networking cannot stray far from reality from his or her online identity, although the users can depict what he or she wishes to display (Moreno et al. 452). There are many young teenagers on social networking websites posting true personal information, but there are also many young teenagers who false information. In fact, many young users of social networking, especially boys, give false information (Moreno et al. 251). Manipulation can occur in order for young users to join that network. Many times younger users have to lie about his or her age which is not always approved by his or her parents (Moreno et al. 253). A survey was done from children ranging from eight years old to twelve years old to provide the results that those who lied about their age did so within a four year range of their actual age. Thus, they knew they had to use false information, so they provided it with care (Moreno et al. 256). Because of the easiness to create an account falsely, it also makes it simpler to deceive one another. Deception is used to attack another user potentially causing upsetting consequences. The deception taking place online from networking is typically used to mislead others (Tsikerdekis and