Thirteen-year-old Virginian Nicole Madison Lovell recently was murdered, her body found near the border of Virginia and North Carolina. Two college students, David Eisenhauer, 18, and Natalie M. Keepers, 19, have been arrested for the murder. It’s reported that Lovell met Eisenhauer through social media.

Lovell was heavily engaged in social media, according to reports. She recently logged a message in the Facebook group “Teen Dating and Flirting,” posting a picture and asking respondents if she was “cute or nah.” She received several responses—not all of them positive—and family members say she’d been bullied at school and online.

“Social media creates an almost addictive need for affirmation,” says Robert Faris, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis. “We’ve got qualitative and quantitative data on that. When teenagers aren’t getting enough of it, they will go and seek it wherever they can find it.” (Slate)