Since social media is such a mainstay in today’s society, people should not be allowed to obscure their identities on any platform. People use it to connect with family members, make love connections and even sometimes just to feel included. While social media and other online accounts and things of that nature can be fun and helpful, there is a lot that goes happens on a daily basis online that is not safe. The world is full of people who are not considerate of others feelings and choose to ignore right from wrong. There are scammers, bullies, predators and overall terrible people who make being online and having an account unsafe. If there was a way to pin point who these people are early, something can be done and can make social media and even the world a safer place.
In the past 8-10 years, social media has taken off in ways some may feel are unimaginable. The first major social network to be launched was Facebook in 2004, today Facebook has an average of 1 billion active followers a month. In the year 2016, it is safe to say that our society revolves around social media. Knowing how big social media has become and continues to grow, it is necessary to acknowledge that not everyone goes on social media with the same purpose. Some people go online to lie, hide and even manipulate other users because they know they can do so usually without any repercussion. It is so easy to lie when setting up any sort of social media account. Users are given free range to put whatever name they want, whatever age they want and even whatever profile picture desired. Lying about identities online has become such a major problem, that in 2012 a man named Nev Schulman took his story to MTV and they created a show called CatFish. The word CatFish became an epidemic in and of itself, everyone began to know people who pretended to be other online as CatFish. While most of the people on the show were just pretending to be other people because of self-esteem issues, some of them were Catfishing people to be vindictive and to hurt them. If people were forced to portray their real selves online at all times, CatFish would not be a thing and people would not be allowed to ruin others’ lives for likes and comments.
Say a young lady goes online right now and sees a trending topic called “#BombDay”, imagine her clicking the top tweet attatched to that trending topic and be a large amount of people putting up names of buildings they were going to bomb today. Now picture her trying to click on those profiles to see who these people making said threats were…and not being able to see their faces and know who they are and what they look like because they do not have a profile picture and their “name” is simply “Online User”. At that moment the user has no idea who is making the threat and cannot even put a face to a name because there is not one. People being allowed to obscure their identities online can really be harmful especially in situations like this. It also can make it hard for police and investigators to find out who is making the threats and if they are even real. If everyone who created an online account of any kind was required to have a real photo id of themselves and put their real name on their profile, threats made online would minimize and possibly even crime itself. While people of all ages are on social media and other online accounts that require personal profiles, a majority of the members are youth ages 16 to 26. Most social media sites require its users to be at least 15 to join, but as previously stated, it’s easy to lie about your age online. Kids as young a 12 have Facebooks, Twitters and even Instagram’s that they check on a daily basis. Most children want to be on these sites to be cool like their peers, but a lot of the time their peers are not really their “peers” but are actually adults posing as younger people. There are some sick people in this world who will get online and target these young kids because they know they don’t know any better. We have all heard sad stories about young kids being hurt by predators online. This is another major flaw in being allowed to obscure identities on social media and other online sites. If people are required to always show their true selves and use their real names, kids are going to be less likely to fall for predator accounts. With full names and accurate profile pictures, even if a child falls for a predators lie, one again police and investigators will be able to identify and locate the predator quicker than having to contact information technology teams to track them down. It is also important to understand that while there are a lot of people who hide their identity on social media and other online sights for vindictive reasons, there is also a large portion of people who do it for other reasons. Some people are not comfortable with putting their full name out there for everyone to see and want to maintain their privacy. There are people who want to be able to be on social media and in with everyone else but they do not want it to be easy for everyone to find them. Whatever is put on the internet stays on their even after you delete it and sometimes that is not always a good thing. If you search hard enough, no matter how badly someone does not want to be found it is quite possible. Not everyone wants to hide their identity to be rude or mean or to scam people out of their belongings. Sometimes it is all about personal preference and what they are comfortable with. Others, could be trying to hide from the very people who are online making threats, being bullies and scamming people. In conclusion, it is all about moral principle and common sense. Everyone knows it is wrong to lie and to pretend to be someone you are not especially if you are doing it to hurt others. While this is common knowledge, every day people are suffering because these rules are not being followed. Some individuals lack a moral compass and really do not think what they are doing is harmful or even matters but that’s not the case. If there was a law passed, or software developed that could verify that all online accounts match up to their creator social media would be a lot safer and less scary. Until that happens, we will all have to continue to be mind of who we interact with on social media and monitor our children to make sure they are out of harms way.