Searching and making friends online through social media networks is the current trend followed by our teens. Facebook, which is being considered as the world’s largest social network has about 500 million users all over the world. It is also factual that teenagers and children are the widespread users of Facebook. Facebook comes with a major intention saying, “stay connected with your friends”. But it should have been like “stay connected with strangers”, for what is happening currently.
Right from childhood we have been taught not to talk or keep contact with strangers. But while it comes to online, the entire thing is forgotten and kids start to make friendship with unknown persons. They share their interests and activities. On Facebook, you can post photos, your address details, the school or college you attended and more. To say in simple, there are blank spaces left in Facebook to fill-up the entire information about you that includes your phone number too.
With a single click, any unknown person could get all these information. Though there are privacy settings for photos and other details, not all users are aware about it. This is the serious and foremost danger any child could face on using Facebook. They accept friend requests from strangers and start chatting with them.
The stranger may be a friend’s friend or someone else in a fake name. There is no assurance with a social media network, whether you are interacting with the correct person. On keeping in mind that kids are the common users of Facebook, several child predators and rapists have started to join the network in phony names. If this continues, then it is sure that world is going to face a severe menace in child abuse activities. The age limit for joining Facebook is said to be thirteen. But do you think that children in today’s world are going to follow it? Not at all.
Even eight year old children join Facebook for the fun it brings. They aren’t aware of the risks they are going to face on Facebook. Most of the teens are crazy about finding new and more friends so that they could make their profile look colorful. Chatting with these new friends initially begin with a ‘hi’ and finally widens into nasty and unwanted talks. While this continues, within a short while they find themselves sticking into photo and video threats. There are a lot of teenage girls getting blackmailed with those videos and photos they have uploaded in Facebook.
Your Facebook profiles are easily searchable through public search listings. Hence if you are a person highly concerned about the privacy of your Facebook profile, then unless you change your privacy settings, your profile would be displayed in the result pages of major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Facebook is a vast social media network with a lot of privacy options that keeps your profile protected from strangers. Children never mind about these privacy settings and simply get addicted to these social media networks. They see Facebook as a hot vogue to get hold of new friends whereas adults see it as a network to keep connected with old friends.
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While respecting the child rights in the 21st century, the navigating privacy issues between the generation is certainly a greatest challenge not only for the social media networking sites like Facebook but also to the Law/Policy Makers for providing effective Internet Governance to the global citizens in the digital age.
There is an urgent need to impart value education & computer skills for developing positive attitude & discipline including Facebook etiquettes in the parents’ as well as the children by promoting a healthy balance act between the children thriving for more independence & their parents’ responsibility to keep an eye on what their children are doing online to ensure that they are safe from cyber crimes, child abuse & kidnapping, etc.
The issue needs to expedite Advocacy through SWOT analysis for reforming the internet/cyber laws & also to resolve the child abuse/cyber crimes & other social evils in order to create a humane society by God’s Grace!
maybe childrens account could be link to there parents seperate bt wer parents can controll wt parts of facebook there kids can see! perants and teens.. wen u sign into any site it tells u nt to give personal info to strangers!! thye site can not be held responsible for the kidnappings nd things happening in our sick world!!