With the advancement in technology in a short matter of time it has impacted the world in many ways such as how the world communicates and our life styles. One of the many revolutionary inventions or evolutions is called social networking sites (SNS). Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and many more, are where people gather in the internet, create a personalized profile about themselves, and interact with people around the world. With the lack of parental supervision between the ages of fourteen to seventeen, which makes one of largest demographics using social networking sites, these teens could be subjected to mature elements. Young teens between the ages of fourteen to seventeen should not be allowed to have a profile on social networking sites because they do not have the capability to make proper logical decisions.
With the level of exposure that teens are facing today by joining the social networking trend, they often forget the dangers of social networking such as stalkers and pedophiles, who may use the sites as a major tool of the trade. Said dangers can befriend naive teens and lure them into dangerous situations. For example, Raymond Wang had a friend being stalked by an unknown person through one of the social networking sites. This stalker acquired private information about her via Facebook, and it got to the point where the stalker was sending her threatening or perverted letters to her actual mailbox detailing what he would do to her. “This has really affected her a lot because now she’s scared other stalkers might do the same and she doesn’t want that to happen or have anything happen to her.” (Wang 19) Even though users are given the option to make one’s profile private, there is still the looming threat that stalkers are able to gather enough information about the person’s whereabouts.
Another similar incident happened to Regina Chau, a member of a social networking site catered to the raver lifestyle, Plurlife. When she first joined with her offline friends she liked everything about the SNS, but “where most of the people you accept to your friends list would probably be strangers.” (Chau 18) she had befriended a person she did not know offline and one these “friends” got a little too friendly with her; “he would keep asking over and over if I wanted to meet up with him at the next event. I found this a little creepy and did not message him back after that.
