Children are often the targets of predators on Facebook. Parents have to be very careful, especially now that Facebook has lowered the age limit for children to have and post information on this popular social networking site to 13 years old. Currently Facebook has over 1.2 billion members and is growing everyday – as it does so the potential targets increase as well.
While it is true that Facebook has many positive social benefits associated with it that we all enjoy, such as staying in touch with friends and family – there is also an extreme dark side as well that people should be aware of.
For one Facebook is literally infested with spies, lies, blackmailers, hacks, cranks and others who specifically target people of all ages and demographics.
In fact everything you can imagine goes on there, including those you can’t imagine as well.
The dangers are especially prevalent where children are concerned.
Perhaps its their innocent or naïveté, whatever the case may be they are often times the specific targets of predators online.
In my office l have literally hundreds of reports and news articles, stretching back over a decade dealing with cases of crimes being committed against children on Facebook.
Some are more extreme than others, but they all have one thing in common insofar as the victims are all children or young adults who were taken advantage of in some way, shape or form.
To help illustrate the dangers I have decided to reference two examples:
For example in 2009, a 19 year old man plead guilty to sexual assault after he posed as a teenage girl on Facebook and tricked 31 teenage boys into sending him nude pictures of themselves. He then threatened to send the pictures to everyone in the boys high school networks on Facebook if they did not agree to meet him and preform sex acts. 50% of them met his demands and their subsequent sexual assaults became the basis of his arrest and prosecution (source: “Stancl is convicted of assault”, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, pg B1, Dec. 23, 2009 by Mike Johnson http://milwaukee-journal-sentinel.vlex.com/vid/stancl-plea-berlin-facebook-sexting-73664344).
In 2010 an 18 year old Ottawa man (aka: “the Webcam Puppeteer”) successfully blackmailed 22 adult women and girls (some as young as 14 years old) into undressing in front of webcams at home (in the privacy of their bedrooms) while men from all around the world paid to watch them over the internet. The Puppeteer managed this by persuading his victims to send him nude pictures of themselves in exchange for thousands of dollars, but instead of paying them, he blackmailed them instead by threatening to send the photos to relatives and coworkers on their friends lists if they did not preform more acts under his command. During his confession the man told police officers that one of his victims said she wanted to kill herself as she obeyed his orders over the web cam – others he described broke down emotionally and cried throughout their remote controlled sexual ordeals (source: “Sex, lies and webcams” Ottawa Citizen May 5, 2010, pg A1 http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/story.html?id=bb124bd6-1840-44e1-88e0-0e8f59977446).
I could go on and cite many more horrific examples, including some where victims actually committing suicide because they couldn’t take it anymore…but I think you get the point!
Recently as many of you know, Facebook decided to lower the age limit of those authorized to have accounts and post publicly to 13 years of age – which in my opinion is a huge mistake! Sadly we lost that battle with the social networking giant on that issue – but the war continues. The best we can do at this point is try and educate parents and the publics of the dangers.