The Unsu­per­vised Playground

Social net­work­ing is tak­ing over the world, it seems.  Often referred to as the 24/7 Dig­i­tal World because it never sleeps, and is acces­si­ble from anywhere…at any time of the day.  In the begin­ning, it was MySpace.  That was the “in place” to be.  There were the beau­ti­ful lay­outs and back­grounds to choose from, and every­body want­ing to be your friend.  Excit­ing, right?  Then came Face­book – with a vengeance.  There was an instant migra­tion, almost send­ing MySpace into non-existence.  Twit­ter, LinkedIn, Form­spring, and a ton of oth­ers, fol­lowed close behind.  How many of these net­works boast a pro­file with your name?

Do you know any of these women?

Ash­leigh Hall, Kacie Rene Woody, Tiffany Marie Souers, Demi Wright, Christina Long, Tay­lor Behl, Gail Joseph.  They all have one thing in com­mon.  Can you guess what that is?  Take a look.  Click on a few of them and read the first few sen­tences.  Are you done? Then by now, you know they were all mur­der vic­tims – at the hands of men they met on the inter­net; pri­mar­ily, Face­book, and MySpace.  There are more like them, but the pic­ture is painted clear enough.  This is not to scare you, but to bring aware­ness to the seri­ous­ness of this unsu­per­vised play­ing field.  These net­works were estab­lished for social­iz­ing, not mur­der.  Sadly, that has been the out­come, for more than a few women.

Accept­ing Friends…or not

Nine­teen year old, Ana María Chávez Niño accepted a friend request from a man on Face­book.  Ulti­mately, he gained her trust, a mutual agree­ment was made to meet, and she was mur­dered.  I don’t know how most peo­ple han­dle friend requests, or how they base their deci­sions on who to accept, or not, but I will share my method.

When a friend request comes to my page, if there are no mutual friends, I gen­er­ally ‘ignore’ the request.  Unlike many oth­ers, I am not there to see how big my friend list can grow, but rather to engage in, and share infor­ma­tion with, peo­ple I con­sider friends, or at least acquain­tances.  If a friend request comes through and there is a mutual friend, it’s han­dled dif­fer­ently.  Depend­ing on what “friend(s)” we share, I may accept.  If the friend is some­one that I don’t con­fer with often, I might take a look at the requestor’s pro­file to see what, if any­thing, we have in com­mon, and I make my deter­mi­na­tion from there.  I will admit that there are times I go onto the person’s pro­file to see what type of con­tent they have there, because that gives me an idea of ‘who’ they are, as an individual.

Pause before you pose

Be care­ful of the infor­ma­tion, and espe­cially pic­tures, you put on social net­work­ing sites.  Camille Math­uras­ingh was killed by an ex-boyfriend who saw pic­tures of her with another man on her Face­book page.  Ex-boyfriends aside, make smart deci­sions, in gen­eral, because you never know where your pho­tos can end up.  All it takes is a sim­ple right-mouse-click and the “Save As” option to have your pic­ture saved onto another person’s com­puter, their ipod, their site.  You are aware that you don’t have to accept a friend request for some­one to view your photo album, right?  This is true.  All the infor­ma­tion, except your full pro­file page is acces­si­ble to any­one – yes, even when it’s private.

Social­ize Smart

In no way, is Baby­girlz Mag­a­zine blam­ing the social net­work­ing bill­boards for the may­hem.  We are ask­ing you to think care­fully, when cre­at­ing, and mon­i­tor­ing, your page.  Do this by mak­ing edu­cated deci­sions about what per­sonal infor­ma­tion to divulge, as well as what pic­tures to post.  Like­wise, think smart when you decide to accept friend requests.

Social net­work­ing sites can be ben­e­fi­cial, putting you in touch with friends, and fam­ily, alike.  In my case, over the past 3 months, I have inter­acted with sev­eral fam­ily mem­bers that I would have never known about had it not been for Face­book.  While these sites can cer­tainly serve to bridge gaps, it is up to the user to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions, tread­ing care­fully, top­ping the list.

Be Safe…not Sorry.