The Dark Side of Social Networks

[Grandad]

Like it or not we more and more depend on the internet to organise our lives, book holidays, purchase goods, and do our accounts. All have now become part of life to most of us.

I have always viewed social networks as potentially sinister and why people open their hearts to their 'friends' and the wider world escapes me. They have proved to be the medium for pulling people together for riots and revolutions, raves, and unexpected hoardes at simple celebration parties.

Of late, the darker side of these sites is increasingly emerging in the form of 'trolls' and cyber bullying. A young 14 year old, Hannah Smith, took her own life on Friday after sustained bullying on Ask.fm, an unmodified and completely open forum based in Latvia. Hannah may well have had other things on her mind but the cruel comments aimed at her pushed her over the edge.

Hannah is not a single sad case, there have been many such cases and their numbers are increasing. It seems almost impossible to trace the perpetrators because they repeatedly change their identity. Email and text are OK in my opinion but, unless these sites can be properly monitored and controlled, I would have them all closed down.

Any views on the subject folks?

[Horus]

I think that these sites can be very bad especially if they are unregulated, that is one good thing about the L4U sites, some people may disagree and even get a bit annoyed when they are moderated, but it is better than letting things get out of hand. It is always difficult to judge when to call time or to intervene as you don't want to stifle debate or to be too much of a school marm and treat people like children. However as you can see for yourself on other forums it is often necessary to jump in because some people do not seen to know when they overstep the mark. When it is just adults involved then the leash can be quite loose and only the odd chastisement is required although some people do not seem to know when to give it a rest. All this changes when you involve adolescents, it is so easy for a more skilled practitioner to very badly hurt the feelings or emotions of more innocent and less worldly wise types especially young children. We all know how cruel the schoolyard can be, but at least in my day it was supervised in some way and the bullying could be controlled or at least limited to 'playtime' now it can be a continual onslaught of verbal abuse on social sites by what are really out of control children being allowed to vent their nastiness on anyone they choose and as these sites form a large part of their social interactions it is hard to ignore. It is not the fault of the kids, although some could do with a good slap, but rather the fault of these none- moderated forums that allows them to behave in an unrestrained and uncontrolled manner, I am often reminded of the film 'Lord of the Flies' when I see these sort of reports, a classic example of how uncontrolled children can degenerate into animal like behaviour and pick upon the weakest and show little compassion. All social sites IMHO that involve children should be moderated by approved adults, if that is not acceptable then they should close them down, after all you would not tolerate that sort of lack of supervision in your childs classroom and we must not lose track of the fact that they are still only children.

[Jayway]

Well, all this fuss, parents are not doing their job. The phrase "Sticks and stones will break my bones, words will never hurt me" should be drummed into every child from an early age. As for the ridiculous adult publicity seeking morons on Twitter - maybe someone could tell them there is an OFF button. I have no problems with my FB pages and twitter accounts, crap comes and the account is deleted, closed -- whats so difficult to understand ?

[Horus]

I could not agree more with you Jay, the ultimate responsibility is with the parents who do not supervise enough regarding what their kids are doing online. However these social media sites are a big part of youth culture and while a mature adult will just shrug off any trolling type abuse, these youngsters have little experienece of how to deal with it and often allow it to destroy their lives althogh I do have to question what sort of mindset causes one to commit suicide. I suppose its the fact that they are unable to divest themselves of using these sites because all of their 'friends' use it and to stop is to deprive themselves of the social interaction with their peers regardless of how abusive those peers may be, like many things today it seems we have bred a very fragile group of people who seem unable to cope on their own.

[Grandad]

like many things today it seems we have bred a very fragile group of people who seem unable to cope on their own.

I think there is some truth in that Horus. Children now tend to spend much of their time at home in there bedrooms. They have their TV, computer, and mobile phone and live in an isolated world of their choice. Communicating over cyber space and watching God knows what on their computers. I am not saying ALL children but, picking up Jayways comments, more those where parental guidance is lacking and the child looks elsewhere for some friendly interchange.

My own grand daughters have all that I have mentioned and use social media just as most young people do. What I would say is that they come from families that eat their meals together, discuss family matters and personal matters together, and as such are more balanced and rational, and part of a loving family.

A 13 year old engaged in sexual activity with a man in his twenties. In court the defence barrister described the girl as predatory and sexually aware. He has been reprimanded for his words but to some extent I find myself agreeing with him but once again the girl would not have been those things had she had a loving and guiding family behind her.

As for pressing the off button or just ignoring the messages, I am afraid you could only understand why not if you could get inside the mind of these impresionable young people.

[Horus]

I tend to agree with you Grandad especially about that 13 year old girl and although nothing can justify the actions of an adult in connection with underage sex I still have some reservations. How many times have we all witnessed examples of extremely precocious young girls who are obviously fully aware even at a very young age of the power of using ones sexuality to attract attention. This of course does not in any way excuse the actions of adults who should know better, but I suppose in the twilight world of unsupervised behaviour that most of these kids inhabit, then they gravitate to the more unseemly types who will take advantage of them, but I fear that quite often they are fully aware of what is going on. The bottom line though is that the child is still a child and the bad behaviour or involvement in sexual activity at such a young age is down to bad parenting and lack of guidance/education. I will make a fairly safe bet though, if you lined up an identity parade of potential parents for any given child it would be very easy to match the parent to that child after listening to them both speak for two minutes or so, there is no doubt that there is an underclass of children bred from an equally underclass group of parents, they stand out a mile.

[LovelyLadyLux]

I think in some cases and maybe most cases the youngster on social media is talking with strangers and with known entities. I think it when they cyber bullying starts but is also carried on during the school day or home day that it (the bullying) can seem inescapable. It is really sad that so many kids don't realize there IS an off button and "delete" is a real thing. I do believe face to face bullying is prevalent and combined with cyber bullying it gives the child no escape.

What amazes me is the sheer amount of time a child is allowed to be online without supervision. Doesn't the parent ever stick their nose in, ask who their talking to and query the content by way of leaving a very open invite to talk to the parent and share the content?? My daughters grew up before cyber anything so it was never really a concern of mine but I'm pretty sure when the twins are online and I know they will be I'm pretty darn sure Grandma will be involved and encouraging talk (if I can beat out their parents to this)

Personally I'm really only on FB to post photos and keep in touch with people I really know.

I got an 'invite' today from a John Smith or some other innocuous name to be FRIENDS? Why would I? Why even click the button? This, to me, is a no brainer but if you had the lonely teen with few friends am sure they would be willing to talk to John Smith or John Doe and then all the real subversive stuff starts.

I wish there was a REAL PLACE you could report these trolls to. A real place who would actually shut them down AFTER 1 COMPLAINT.

I've never twittered or tweeted. FB is about my only social site other than these forums here - E4U, L4U and RedSea4U (but not even sure that one is still going)

[Grandad]

I am like LLL and only a member of FB to keep in touch with family. Other wise I seldom see photos of their excursions and holidays. They don't use cameras any more, just smart phones

I heard about another side of social media sites, particularly FB and Youtube. It seems the innocent clicking of a 'like' button can do more than just appreciate someones post or picture. Firstly it can send that 'like' to all your friends, and if they 'like' it it will go to all their friends and in no time half the country can have registered a 'like' of the same thing.

There are unscrupulous users who will set up thousands of registrations. They then put up someone or something they want to promote, such as a product, a pop group, an artist etc; then by using people in such places as Bangladesh, provide them with a spread sheet of these registration usernames and passwords and get them to wade through putting a 'like' on the desired object. These people are paid peanuts for their trouble but the end result is that something comes to the fore with a significant number of 'likes' which in turn can create a broader interest in the item. If it is, say, a third rate pop group they can get work from this fraudulent promotion.

Seems a lot of work but the cost is low and there can be considerable rewards.

[LovelyLadyLux]

I maintain 2 email addresses. One that goes out ONLY to people I really know. The other one on a completely different venue I use to make enquiries IF I decide to query something and I know this site gets MEGA scam and spam email. I literally guard my good email but somehow it is slowing acquiring spam too.

I do have a FB account and when I signed up it was with essentially fake demographic info. I think I put I lived in Canada but I do know now that FB is always requesting I add phone numbers, specific addresses and on and on. WHY would I want to do this? WHY in all that is holy does anybody NEED TO KNOW my exact house address? It'll NEVER EVER be on a site. People I know have it and friends have it but to have it out there for the entire world to see is not going to happen.

I sometimes think that we moved into cyber world so quickly nobody had time to put well thought out regulations on it. It is also a global commodity so who really does get to say what needs to be done? Am sure Egyptian people would have different rules in place for using a social media site than the UK, Canada, Australia or the USA who often wants to run everything.

We're learning some very horrific lessons about the downside of social media and just like I learned as a child not to talk to the stranger(unfortunately always described to me as the dirty old man as my parents never thought in those days that a woman could be equally dangerous to a child) NOW we need to educate about cyber world. I think as parents we have to super involved in our child's cyber world and I'd advocate that a parent should be able to somehow access their child's computer usage. Not sure how techno cyberworldly this could happen but am sure it could. Perhaps if parents had the ability to log on and SEE spontaneously at any time and the BLoCk or LOCk OUT their child from anything they (parents) don't like it would save us from tragedies of teens suffering at the hands of cyber bullies.

I think part of the problem is parents have no ability to really know who their child is talking to. There is too much leeway for a teen to become a victim without adult intervention or supervision as computers are now everywhere and kids can log on without supervision. Not sure how to fix this but I think this is a contributing factor to the problem.

[Grandad]

The 'history' record contains a list of all sites visited and some movement within those sites. Perhaps it would be possible for the 'history' record to be locked with access only available to a parent with a password. That parent could then review their childs online activity. I don't know if such an approach would be possible.

I bet very few children regularly clear their history folder.....so information is probably already available to most parents.

Just a thought.

[Horus]

All it would require is for the History to be retained instead of being deleted at certain intervals which most PC's are set to do, you do this under your internet perferences. If you set the 'Internet Options' so that you un-check the option 'delete browsing history on exit' in the Browsing History section and then in the Settings tab set the number of days to retain the History to be 999 days (the maximum allowed) then you can review it back as far as you like. Of course on a shared computer with several users YOU need to be the 'Administrator' and keep your log-on password secret, that way no one but you can change those settings and the history will always be available to you.

[LovelyLadyLux]

What you suggest H sounds like a great start. I'd add though that somewhere somehow parents should be able to monitor surreptitiously everything their child is saying in real time. The parent should have the ability to be the Administrator and then be able to drop is 'cyberwise' whenever they feel like it. This way they can watch and catch everything their child is saying and to whomever. IF they find anything untoward being said there should be some sort of alert button they can activate so as to track down to, at least, the computer and its whereabouts.

I know this plan would have loopholes you could drive a truck through but at least it would be something and much better than what we have in place right now which is basically nothing.