Julia Brand
English 101
September 11, 2014
Dangers of Social Media Social media has become a commonplace in the homes across America. Like all things there are those out there who looks to use things for bad purposes. This puts us in a predicament where our children have access to the entire world before they’re truly ready to experience it. This means we need to help teach our children what is and isn’t safe on the internet and for us as parents to also recognize what is harmful and to attempt to protect our children. The dangers they face are often cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying, and a “no privacy” zone. Being able to recognize these things and teach our children how to handle them will make for a much safer social media experience and an all-around more fun one. A threat to children that can lead to many harmful outcomes is cyber-stalking. This also includes harassment over the internet. Many times cyber-stalking is performed by a jealous ex-boyfriend/girlfriend who becomes obsessive and unable to move on from the relationship. Sometimes this can be an adult posing as a child in an attempt to lure them to their home. This is a particularly dangerous form of cyber-stalking that has very potentially dangers outcomes. Many times these people go years without being caught because they cause the victim to be in fear of telling what happened and they often times return to the abuse. Another form of cyber-stalking is where someone “for fun” repeatedly sends malicious content to the victim attempting to scare them or hurt them. These different types of cyber-stalking are important for a parent to attempt to recognize because they can cause the victim to become scared to use their social media accounts. Cyber-bullying is another danger that lurks around social media sites that our children often become a victim of or even take part in. This has seen many growing campaigns around the news and internet to put a stop to because of it having an even larger effect than normal bullying because it can be seen and witness by much larger audiences than just a classroom. Cyber-bullying can take more forms than one. “Cyber-bullying is becoming increasingly common: 38% of young people have been affected by cyber-bullying.”(NSPCC.org) The reason it is important to prevent cyber-bullying is because it can lead to our children being depressed, feelings of sadness and loneliness, loss of interest in hobbies, health problems. The cyber-bullying usually involves public threats to harm someone, to humiliate them, to tease or make fun, or to criticize them for the way the act or live. It is more harmful on social media, because it is “public,” it isn’t just heard by a few people standing nearby. It can and is usually seen by the entire internet that knows that person and friends of those friends etc. No longer are we confined by our physical location, because social media accounts can be read from anyone anywhere in the world, and this feeling can cause children who are victims to feel like the whole world hates them and is laughing at them. The final danger is the lack of privacy. These social media sites are a billboard for the world about an individual. When someone posts a picture or a “status” this can be accessed by anyone who has access to the site they post it to and it is kept around permanently, able to be accessed for years down the road which presents some issues. Today companies looking to hire people will often create Facebook accounts for the sake of phishing for information that shows the individual looking to be hired isn’t a desirable candidate. This is why helping our children understand privacy settings are important. Even with strict privacy settings though it is also important to help them to know what you should and shouldn’t be posting to begin with. Many teens and children now like to post pictures of themselves partying and partaking in less and legal activities onto their social media pages to look cool and feel popular. This has already been exploited in some cities around the world for making arrests and suspending children from schools. Not to mention when these kids grow up and look for jobs those pictures are still around and can be viewed making them less likely to succeed and be hired. Even colleges looking to see who is going to be accepted may look to social media accounts to see if this person is the type of person they want representing their establishment. Having your children’s passwords makes it easy to monitor the posts and delete them if you feel they are harmful or unwise. In closing, we as parents have a rough job and road ahead of us with social media. The more our society moves towards a digital age the more we have to be savvy to the dangers and preventions of these dangers. We need to monitor our children’s activities with 3rd party apps that allow us to see what they’ve been doing and posting so we can agree whether it is appropriate. Talking to our children about these dangers is also important because we can’t always be around to watch them and monitor them because they may feel embarrassed sometimes about what is going on. These dangers will most likely never go away and with the increasingly popularity of social media more and more dangers will most likely become visible. So as parents continuing to learn and adapt is important to protecting our kids because they may feel like they know everything but usually they are more naïve than they know. So take some more time out of your day, and ask your child what they are doing and if everything is ok.

"Cyberbullying." NSPCC. Web. 11 Sept. 2014.

"Dangers of the Social Web." InternetSafety101.org: Dangers. Web. 11 Sept. 2014.

"Children and Social Networking Sites." Netmums. Web. 11 Sept. 2014. <http://www.netmums.com/teenagers/safe-surfing-on-the-internet/your-children-and-the-internet-social-networking-s>.

"5 Tips to Protect Your Children, Tweens and Teens from Dangerous Games on Social Media." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 3 Mar. 2014. Web. 11 Sept. 2014.