A MySpace user recently was arrested for targeting and coercing teenage girls as young as 13 to send him nude pictures of themselves.
David Evans contacted the young girls through their own MySpace accounts and posed as a 20-year-old man interested in being their “friend.” Evans is a 48-year-old cafeteria worker living in Buffalo, NY, who was deceiving the girls in hopes of receiving sexual favors. For several girls, his deception worked, making them the victims of an ever-increasing amount of crimes conducted through social networking sites.
In 2007, cases involved everything from stolen identities to general harassment to bullying leading to suicide. Already this year, aside from the Evans case, a murder mystery involving online deceit and manipulation arose in Canada.
“Though it is unfortunate to say so, incidences such as these will likely only grow in volume as the social networking industry expands,” says online news source Mashable. “As with any vast society of nearly infinite complexity, the good and the decent share the open terrain with less savory – and occasionally the criminally-inclined – individuals.”
Some site such examples of danger to encourage social networking companies and site hosts to police their memberships a bit more closely. Others are proposing the establishment of a central agency that monitors the action. And others place the responsibility for monitoring, educating, and protecting back into the hands of parents and educators.
Where do you think the responsibility for educating, monitoring, and protecting teens on social networking sites lies? What might you target as the underlying issue lending to such venerability among teenagers?
(Mashable, 1/6)
