Minor Assessment (Risk Assessment)

1. Introduction

Social Networking threats are real and on the high on day to day basis. Not long ago, North Carolina General Roy Cooper’s stated that MySpace (a popular social site) had acquired approximately 30,000 registered sex criminal’s profiles. A good example is that a police in Connecticut took in a 21 year old man who was accused of raping a 14 year old girl he met on the social networking site.

Social networking sites offer its clients emails, instant messaging, and video sharing as well as blogging on a single platform hence allowing internet users to be closer to each other. The most common social networking sites are MySpace and Facebook. Studies show that MySpace has about 70 visitors and has been similar to spending time in the mall for today’s children who share their personal information of what they like and do not like, their photos and news on music among others.

Keeping up with friends and family among other people is a quite a good experience for any person, more so for children (Livingstone and Haddon, 2009). The reality is that most number end users that use the social networking sites are modeled to be over 13. This however does not hinder younger children from engaging in activities on these social sites.

In regard to an internet project, Pew Internet & American Life, about half of every 12 year old American makes use of the internet with no consideration for their disentitlement. Organizations that deal in these sites have been engaging in efforts to shut down accounts of individual that are below age. Basically, Facebook approximates that it does away with over 20,000 users daily that it is convinced are below the required age.

The eligible teens on the other hand use these social networking sites hence left exposed to a wide range of probable threats. Facebook, as a good example makes it possible for users to post very detailed personal information regarding themselves like their email accounts, their contact phone numbers, and their families among others. When these children post this information over the internet through the social sites

2. Social Networking Threats
   • Sharing Personal Information

With the emergence of the social networking sites, the threats have similarly been on the rise. Taking into consideration that children place several details about themselves, these are sites are a heaven for online slayers (Livingstone and Haddon, 2009). Hobbies, interests, friends and place they hang out as well as other information are common details that are found on the social networking sites. It is quite scary if a child places details on the social networking site on the places they like to hang out and time they do that.

• Viewing Mature Content

They have been a number of cases about online predators who are busy on these sites to get information on children that they later go on to harm sexually. According to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the numbers of cases that have been reported are over 2600 where about adults use the internet to prey on children so as to have sexual activity with them.

There was an instance of a gay student who was going to church college and was later expelled after the administration officials saw photos of the student on Facebook. Twenty children in California were sent home after getting involved in a MySpace group where which they make death threats each other and Semitic statements. There have been several cases of the same and the most common one is the one that took place in Kansas; authorities took in five teenagers after there were details on a plan by Columbians to attack a boys’ high school. These cases bring forth the major issues of the threats that are posed by the social networking sites.

• Exposure to Criminal Elements

The main issue is based on the fact that these sites are not censored and any person using the internet is able to read all the abusive languages and adopt such behaviour. No one wants to see their children all the abusive languages (Livingstone and Haddon, 2009). The issue is not limited to content or language it is the main point of focus too. A number of social networking sites discuss drugs, alcohol and base their talks on adult issues that every child visiting this site can be able to see. This use of abusive content can be contained through the use of an internet filter.

The social networking sites similarly offer the tools to post images. Most of the images in these sites are sexually evocative. Assuming that a child has not posted a lightly tight photo of herself, one can assume that they have seen these pictures from other sites. These images are then followed by videos and it is through these images that children are able to see graphic content that scare children.

• Exposure to Malware and Viruses

As the children visit the varied social networking sites, they get the computer exposed to varied viruses and data malware. Children are known to be quite inquisitive and would want to know everything that is on the face of this earth. They are hence not in a good position to distinguish on what is good and what is bad site. The graphic videos and pictures have links that direct the computer to other sites that are quite dangerous to the child as well as the computer itself (Livingstone and Haddon, 2009). This may make the computer to shut down or lose some very important information that may be hard to recover. On the other hand, these sites contain malicious links that may use the contact details provided by the child to commit criminal activities. These criminal activities may vary from committing internet fraud, imposter activities and framing one for criminal operations that they have no idea about.

3. Conclusion

Conclusively, these social networking sites have threats that necessarily may not be predators of the internet. In the real life, parents may get to meet the friends of their children that would offer them an opportunity to make choice if they or not they are the type of individuals that they want their children to have most of their time with. The social networking sites have the greatest opportunity to get into contact with individuals that they do not know. No one wants to have their 10 year old daughter to have a 16 year old male friend, no consideration if she is innocent, children are too young to make choices of their own and they have to get our assistance. This paper has been able to go through the varied internet threats that arise from the use of the internet by children. As discussed, these threats vary from sharing information that are too detailed like their contact information, they are left vulnerable to mature content that affect their mind sets and may alter their behaviour, they are exposed to criminal behaviour like thieves, and pedophiles and lastly they can come across computer threats that lead to the loss of vital details as well as viruses. Efforts have to made to restrict out children from getting exposed to these threats, some steps have been made though much still needs to done as these could go on to develop hence affecting future generations like the breeding of new criminals and pedophiles.

 

 

 

 

References

Livingstone, S. and Haddon, L. (2009). Kids Online: Opportunities and Risks For Children.             Bristol: The Policy Press