Why Do Online Predators Use Social Media?

One in four US teen girls reported that they met strangers off the Internet. One in seven boys admitted they did as well. While most of these "Internet friends" turn out to be another teen or preteen, that 's not always the case. Unfortunately, children are now dying at the hands of their Internet child molesters and, not all sexual exploitation of children occurs offline.

Even with the dangerous developments in social media over the past several years, many parents have chosen to allow their children to use these sites despite age restrictions. There are three reasons to argue for age restrictions on social media sites: lack of supervision by parents, targeting of children by pedophiles, and the prevalence of children falsifying their age. The ability of pedophiles to conceivably target children with social media proves that this is an issue that parents need to examine so that they may better protect their children. The threat from pedophiles causes an enormous problem for millions of children on social media sites. Unfortunately, Western Daily Press states that “Pedophiles can get away with grooming young teenagers on social media sites.” My essay will argue that age restrictions need to be in place, and additional regulations should ensure that law enforcement agencies have the tools required to supervise underage children 's use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter. Quoting from Business Wire, “three out of four parents feel that social network sites are not protecting children.” According to Irish Independent, “four out of ten children falsify their age” when using social media. I will also argue that additional research on this topic can be used to raise the awareness of parents, and can also help to alert the children themselves to the danger. My essay will also examine questions, such as: How can social media sites protect

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.

One of the most notable was the case involving Lori Drew and MySpace. Lori Drew a 50-year-old mother created a fake online identity to bully her daughter’s rival. She created a fake profile of a non-existent 16-year-old boy names “Josh Evans.” She lured her daughter’s rival named Megan into an online relationship with Josh. Megan had fallen, for Josh and the mother pretending to be Josh told Megan that “he wanted to quit the relationship and that the world would be a better place without her”. Shortly afterwards, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom. There needs to be a development of strategies, for intervention and knowledge in relation to ways in which social network sites facilitate certain kinds of harmful behavior.

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

Cyberbullying is the biggest cyber crime among all ages, that said it’s because the bullies use social media for to hide their true identity behind a screen. Cyberbullying on social media is everywhere, but on facebook 84.2% was reported, along with instagram reporting with a 23.4%, where 35% of the cyberbullying was in the form of sending mean messages and threats through instant messaging(“Cyberbullying…”). In which cyberbullying has led to find that 20% of respondents reported seriously think of attempting suicide, where as though those who are victims of cyberbullying that reported were twice as likely to attempt suicide compared to the youth that has not experienced cyberbullying (Hinduja). Among with cyberbullying victims are sex trafficking victims. Most sex trafficking victims are gullible children found online, where most of them are advertised and sold online, according to a U.S. Senate subcommittee report in 2017. The National Center for Missing Children and Exploited Children has said that more than 70% of the reports received are of those trafficked children. Though all children and adults are still at a risk of getting involved in the unending string of sex trafficking victims(Wulfhorst). Therefore meeting new people on platforms like social media come with many dangers that many don’t pay

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

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

As technology evolves daily, offenders of sexual victimization will use this outlet to continue victimization. The internet is easily accessible and is used frequently by numerous people. When one is on the internet they are able to hide behind a computer screen. One way these offenders have used the internet for sexual victimization is creating create fake social media accounts where they pose as someone else. Although social media is intended to be a place to connect with friends and family, some have abused these websites and have become online predators. Offenders can target a victim by first following their profile, commenting on pictures, or statuses, and then began online chatting. Through these messages they can attempt to make false

It is common in most social media profiles such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter for a sex predator to be lurking on someones account. The reason why this is so easy for them to do this is because anyone can look at a persons profile on social media. Ways to help protect yourself from this include deleting your accounts or by setting your social media accounts to the private setting. By selecting the private setting this makes it harder for sex predators to look at your information or photos because you will have to approve of their profile before they are allowed to look at yours. Most sex predators profiles are not private and so this makes it easy for you to look at their pictures and determine if you think the person is lying about who

As the internet and social media have made our lives easier, it has also become a easy way for child predators to get in touch with kids. Parents are very much unaware of how cyber-predators look for children of any age from elementary school to high school. Predators can come in diverse forms and have different intentions than other predators. Predators at the least can look for vulnerable children to create online sexual relations with. Next predators can try to meet face-to-face with children they found online and sexually assault them consensually or not. Finally, the worst a cyber-predator can do is find children to become a victim of human trafficking. However, the internet isn’t all a bad thing. It is a very easy and useful tool that

The internet can be an extremely useful tool for everyone, but instant messaging, chat rooms, emails, and social networking sites can also bring trouble from cyberbullying to more serious internet dangers, including exposure to sexual predators.

“As more children gain access to the internet, online predators bypass while preying on young innocent children.” The internet has become on of the biggest technological advancements of this century. The internet has offered so much and has grown in many ways as far as communication. The internet lets people from all over the world communicate and interact, exchanging information in a millisecond. This has opened a virtual world for everyone around us to live in. With the many different social media websites, chatrooms, and forums all over the internet, it has become difficult to decide who is who. It can be appealing to live your main life and then around every worldwide turn live an opposite life online that compensates for your everyday life. In everyday life you deal with criminals and bad guys, those same people exist in the virtual world too. With the variety of bad people trolling the web the sexual predators are the most dangerous.