Why Children under the Age of 18 are Easy Targets
As parents of underage children we strive to protect them from all the evils they may encounter in the world. This was never an easy task, but lately it’s been even harder to get a grip on. Because of the expedited processes of electronic and digital forms of communication and mass media, children have been exposed to much more than the children of previous generations have. Social media is so fundamental to the way we all communicate, adults and children alike, that it is difficult to contain any exposure children may have that parents do not want them to.
As a child of the 80’s I remember spending my free time playing on the block with my friends, riding my bike, doing arts & crafts, and many other productive activities. This generation of children is different. They would rather browse the web than build a tree house. Children are turning to the Internet to fill their spare time with. They are video-gaming, which sometimes involves the use of social networking sites. They are also more and more likely to participate in some sort of social networking site and have a profile on one of the many sites. While there are rules that require users to be over the age of 13 to create profiles on social networking sites, it is very easy to lie and get around it. My little cousin was just 12 when she signed onto MySpace and her profile said she was 15. Children are very determined when they want to get something or do something and they find ways around things.
The most fundamental difference between communication back when I was a teenager and communication among teenagers now is that communication now is extremely expedited, public, and extended. The use of social networking sites connects people to people they would never have been connected to before. Granovetter has a theory on strong ties and weak ties (6). Strong ties are those with people in your immediate circle of friends. For children this is usually neighbors or classmates. Then there is the extended network of friends that Granovetter calls weak ties. These weak ties are essentially what social networking sites are built on. Weak ties are an extended connection to people that are not in your immediate circle. On social networking sites these weak ties are “friends” that you have never met but have been linked to because someone you know knows them. A child or teenager lives their life based on how popular they are at the time. Their high or low level of popularity shapes their behavior. No child wants to have only 6 friends on their friends list on a social networking sites. These children want to be more popular and a surefire way to achieve some sort of status for them is to have tons of friends on social networking sites. They want to have as many as possible to increase their popularity and that is why they accept invitations from people that they do not even know. This is how Kiki Kannibal got to have thousands of friends on MySpace.
This extended network of friends leads to increased exposure to all sorts of things. While there may be some benefits to this exposure, it is important to take into account the kinds of things that children under the age of 18 may be exposed to. For one, children become easier targets for child predators and identity theft predators. They can be solicited easier by a user who may be a middle aged adult claiming to be a teenager just like them. It is very easy to create a profile online with any identity that you choose to, like Lori Drew did. Another issue is that because of the extended network of “friends” and the rapid pace at which information is sent and obtained through social networking sites, bullying has taken on a whole new meaning. Bullying was usually limited to the scope of the school or area where it was occurring. Now bullying takes place online with a much bigger audience that can tap into the victim’s torment. Cyber-bullying is the product of an old problem that many children faced throughout their lives coupled with the technology to broadcast it on a much wider scale.
An important reason why children are so inclined to be tuned into communicating through social networking sites is their need to stay in constant contact with their peers and their need to construct an identity (7). Children can decorate their profile pages in any way they choose, upload images, and describe themselves any way they choose. The problem is that children do not have clear boundaries with what kind of things can be or should be posted on their profile pages. An adult knows that there can be consequences for making information about themselves too public. A child does not have this kind of understanding of boundary lines. Furthermore, children are not fully educated on the privacy policies of the social networking sites or the need to be familiar with them. They may be under the impression that only the people that they are “friends” with on these sites have access to their information, which we know is not always the case.
Most importantly, a child can be easily impressed by a manipulative person using the anonymity of social networking to their advantage in order to dupe the child. An adult with a profile depicting them as a teenager can easily target unsuspecting children into thinking they are socializing with a peer, when in fact they are socializing with a sex offender, pedophile, or child molester. Even though teenagers think they know it all, the naivety and inexperience that a child under the age of 18 possesses can be a great risk factor for them when it comes to communicating on social networking sites.
The FBI has paid special attention to the issues that underage children encounter through the use of social media. Before the age of the Internet and social networking sites child predators would go where there were children. These places include amusement parks, schools, public parks, and zoos. Now they go online. Special Agent Greg Wing of the FBI says that “the younger generation of children wants to express themselves, and they don’t realize how vulnerable that makes them” (8). He talks about two types of pedophiles- those that seek face to face meetings and those that are fine with just collecting child pornography. These predators search through social networking sites by using anonymous identities to seek out young vulnerable children who show signs of low self-esteem and problems with their parents. They manipulate vulnerable youth into trusting them because the children are clueless as to the real dangers behind the anonymous identity.