In 2015, we are more connected than ever before and the manner in which we socialize is changing rapidly. Memes constantly bombard Facebook streams referencing the past — kids will no longer know the fear of calling a crush and having their parent answer, or have to create set plans in advance that cannot be changed on a whim, or have to remember the Konami code (Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start).
Social media is a shining example of this change. Passing notes has been replaced by text messages. Full conversations can be had by two people separated by an ocean with instantaneous feedback.
I’m not here groaning about how things have changed. I welcome these changes with an open mind and an open heart. But, sometimes it seems like the ease of connectivity has lowered the guard of many who benefit from it. Just like how talking to strangers is dangerous at a city park, various dangers of social media exist as well.
A YouTube vlogger named Coby Persin recently conducted a social experiment to highlight the dangers of social media. His experiment involved posing as a 15-year-old and befriending three adolescent girls on Facebook. He had consent from their parents to do so. In the experiment, he highlighted the dangers of social media by luring the girls into situations where they could have been assaulted or abducted. The parents were not happy with the choices their daughters made.
The video can be watched here. I have forgone posting the video directly because I am fairly critical of how Coby Persin conducted the experiment, despite the fact I believe his intentions were altruistic.
The dangers of social media are essentially the same as the dangers of speaking to an unknown individual twenty years ago. There is paramount uncertainty in the kind of person one may be conversing with, including their motives. When I was a kid, “don’t talk to strangers” was a mantra of parents everywhere.
It probably didn’t help that, when I was young, in the mid-1990s, there was a resurgence of paranoia when it came to sex offenders. With the implementation of laws that required local police to inform neighborhoods of registered sex offenders living in the area, mothers and fathers would mobilize (and in some cases militarize) and inform their neighbors that a sex offender lived down the street.
The popularity of America’s Most Wanted didn’t help either.
My aunt was one of these people. Due to scheduling conflicts, my brother and I would spend weekday evenings at my aunt and uncle’s house in Arlington, Texas, while my mom and dad finished their workdays. I explicitly remember telling my aunt I wanted to go outside and throw a football around with my brother, but she rejected my request, on grounds that a registered sex offender had moved down the street.
Around that same time, I remember playing football with a couple of friends in a field (these were the Aikman-Young-Favre days, after all) inside my apartment complex and having to listen to a couple explain to us why we should be on the lookout for “suspicious looking” people.
It was a full-on paranoia that swept everything is came into contact with. My days in Arlington were a constant reminder that I had to be on guard at all times, almost to the point where I shouldn’t even trust the ice cream man. In hindsight, even though the response was, in my view, counter-productive, I suppose Arlington’s paranoia at least had a reason.
On January 13, 1996, nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted in Arlington. My cousin was a friend of Amber’s and I can only assume that Amber’s abduction assisted in my aunt’s militant response to neighborhood sex offenders that prevented me from going outside when I was there.
While her case doesn’t precisely fit what we’re seeing now with the dangers of social media, as Amber was a victim of an opportunistic abduction, people who do things like that still exist. Social media, like Facebook, Kik, Tumblr, and even Tinder, can provide anonymity to someone with ulterior motives and with what appears to be a lack of guard being exhibited by young social media users, these adolescents could effectively put themselves in a position with unintended and deadly consequences.
Coby Persin’s social experiment highlighting the dangers of social media stems from a more recent example. In Nuevo, Calif., a 12-year-old girl, who had spent time chatting with a 27-year-old impersonating a 15-year-old, was nearly sexually assaulted when she sneaked out of the house to meet him. Luckily for the girl, her father and brother were awake and found her before things got really bad.
Sometimes, I find it amazing how much change has taken place in the last twenty years, but I’m still aware that the same dangers exist. While I don’t necessarily agree that traumatizing teenage girls is the right way to educate them on the dangers of social media, I understand that Coby Persin’s intentions were pure. The dangers of social media are abundant and the ability to fall victim to them is still there. Casually messaging some unknown person through Facebook bears little difference than talking to them on the side of the road.
It is the responsibility of not just parents, but also the portion of Millenials who remember neighborhood paranoia, to make sure that kids understand the dangers of social media and take steps to guard themselves while enjoying it. We may never be able to completely abolish the dangers of social media, but with education and altruism, we can at least give teenagers what they need to recognize these dangers, just like our parents did at a time when an afternoon bike ride could have ended in a harrowing experience.
