Dangers of social media for youth
For many young users, the lack of presence in one of the major networks can be seen as a social failure, a sign that someone is foreign, socially inadequate or without modern communication skills. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and many others, local and international, have taken control of the social and communicative lives of many people in modern society. They supplement and sometimes even replace personal contacts between family, friends and colleagues. They are open to most age groups, all professions and social conditions and are usually free of charge. Social media networks can target specific interest groups, age groups, local areas, businesses and enterprises. They offer the possibility to make new friends, to meet other people from all horizons and countries of the world with similar interests and hobbies in a virtual world.
Few of today's most popular social media networks require some kind of identification, be it real identity, age or location. One of the results of this lack of verification is that children under thirteen years of age can access information by indicating an incorrect date of birth and at the other end of the scale those who are significantly older have the ability to create a profile that looks younger than they actually are, with a false name, a false personality and false interests. The openness to anyone who has access to the Internet, whether via a connection to a computer or via one of the most modern smartphones, also poses a number of risks, especially for young users and those who have little or no social or Internet experience.
The former is more suitable for older users of the Internet or social networks, the latter for younger users and minors. Experience in all areas of life is gained primarily through two means: Learning by doing and learning by example.
For the experienced user, it is only a matter of seeing what is similar to other systems and working with other individual parameters and programs. Every social media network or platform has its own special features, its own design, its own rules and its own customer base, to which the user must first adapt. It is a much more complicated experience for the inexperienced user, especially for young users who are new to the Internet or social networking. Within the latter group, those whose only interest in surfing the Internet is to find, contact and benefit from younger and inexperienced users. The Internet is a completely different society from our daily environment, with its own unwritten rules and those that respect them, break them from time to time or strive to avoid and avoid any form of socially responsible behaviour.
One of them is the simple rule taught to all children: Don't talk to strangers. The protection of young Internet users is in many ways similar to the protection of a child in everyday life. There are certain domestic and social rules that must be taught and followed, and many that, by the nature of the Internet, are outside the normal scope of real life protection.
Everyone is essentially an unknown good, a person who cannot necessarily be seen and whose entire history, character, interests and personality can only be measured by what they have personally entered at the chosen place. A social media network is initially nothing more than a collection of individual strangers looking for new experiences, new friends and even online relationships. However, the protection of young users starts before the first profile is displayed and, if possible, before the browser points to a social network. It begins with educating the potential young user by explaining, for example, that trust should be earned rather than automatically given; that nothing a young user does on the Internet or on a social media platform should be kept secret; that it is possible to turn off a computer, block and report those who are offensive, abusive or clearly interested in finding young users for sexual purposes, or that I can't find them.
It is important to ensure that the child's profile does not specify a specific location, that automatic location displays are disabled, that email addresses, home and school addresses are not visible to anyone other than the users themselves if required by the software used, and that page management is not visible. An important factor in protecting young users from abuse is to explain exactly how a social media platform works, what services are available, what security and privacy settings are available and how to create a profile that does not attract bad interest rates. For example, disabling email contact with a younger user when you leave social networking settings. All information entered in a social media profile quickly becomes a commercial commodity that can be sold to third parties outside the platform's secure network. It should also explain how to get certain images, such as photos and personal information, from the general view not only from other users, but also from major search engines that are constantly looking for information on social networks, connections between users, potential companies.
People with more friends on the list are not necessarily more popular, and numbers should not be regarded as indicators of popularity. It is much better to have a smaller number of good, reliable friends than a mass of strangers; friendship cannot be measured by numbers alone. It should be clear that rejecting a friend's application is safe and acceptable and that the number of friends of a person in places where there is no limit says nothing about the person himself. Once a profile is created and the new user becomes active on the social network of their choice, a large number of other users will show interest and there may be a sudden influx of friend requests. It is important to help a child decide which friendships are worthwhile and which friendships can be rejected or ignored, even if the final decision must remain with the child.
Again, it should be stressed that a child using the Internet should not keep secrets from parents or guardians, especially if another user insists that certain things, such as friendship, are best kept secret. Younger social media users must also be well informed about the importance and nature of trust. Every profile on a social media site represents an individual, but not necessarily the person as they are in real life, far away from the Internet. Profiles contain only the information a person wants to reveal, biographies and interests are written to impress, age is often changed, as are locations and even profile photos. As a form of self-protection, young users should not accept anyone literally, but show that it is acceptable and even the best policy to make friends slowly and carefully. The younger, inexperienced user should not initially rely on what he reads in a profile, and certainly not on what another user tells him in a private conversation.
A smaller proportion of these users are also interested in actual sexual satisfaction, physical abuse and child sexual abuse. The use of webcams on the Internet is a very popular pastime for many young users. Everyone has the opportunity to see who they are talking to and to have a virtual conversation depending on the level of connection. Most of these users are only interested in personal sexual satisfaction, in manipulating others to perform certain actions that are unacceptable in normal social situations or in society in general. This level of communicative friendship is also open to abuse, especially on websites that specialize in attracting younger users, by older users who have forged their birth data to appear much younger than they really are.
Signs that a webcam user is not necessarily who he claims to be: insist that a friendship remains secret before a new contact is possible; say that they don't have a webcam; say that their webcam is broken right now; have a webcam in which the projected image is so blurred that you can't see anything; have a webcam.
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