Blog #4

Dangers of New Media

Come close and come quick! I’m here to share with you something I find interesting and at the same time I find horrifying! That something that is the dastardly dangers of the new media! Now in new Media there are lots of countless things that can wrong, and that you should be aware of. But for today’s topic I am going to only discuss one. One thing that I think is one of the biggest dangers when is all the deception you can find on the Internet, particularly, Facebook. So why am I hating on the giant blue social butterfly? Well we are all (the majority) familiar with the show Catfish on MTV. Where the two detectives of romance Max and Nev courageously take on some Americas online relationships and see if everyone is who they say they are. About 50% or more of those couples on that show have a fictitious lover. As entertaining and thrilling, as the show is to watch, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the majority of the people were using a fake profile, with a fake name, and picture. People can be anybody they chose to be on the Internet, and frankly, that frightens me. Who knew that with the wonderful invention of Facebook could lead to so much deception. According to CNN there are over 83.09 million gag accounts on Facebook. 80.09 million is quite a number to wrap your head around. “In an updated regulatory filing released Wednesday, the social media company said that 8.7 percent of its 955 million monthly active users worldwide are actually duplicate or false accounts.”(Kelly) Now if that doesn’t get you wondering about who’s really in your friends list I don’t know what will. Even though we live in this new NEW media time it’s still just as easy to get duped or hurt. It’s amazing that with all the achievements we’ve made in technology and communications that predators can still find their ways into our computer screens. People need to play it smart when they’re on the web, especially if they’re looking for  love, just because a profile looks legitimate doesn’t mean it is.. You have to be careful with who you are conversing. Some standard advice that I would give any friend is to always ask if this person that you met online can video chat. There is no excuse for someone to not have a webcam of some kind of device in this day and age we live in now. If they refuse to video chat than refuse to talk to them, to me, that’s a red flag. Also if the person you’re talking to online keeps coming up with excuses for why they can’t meet, odds are they are not who they say they are. I hate to say that you can’t trust anyone you meet on the Internet but sadly the information is against the truth, for example  “duplicate accounts make up 4.8% (45.8 million) of Facebook's total active member tally.”(Kelly) It’s hard to be optimistic with those facts. So be smart my friends! Don’t let the profile picture fool you, you never know who you could be talking to in the digital world.

Cited Sources:

Kelly, Heather. "83 Million Facebook Accounts Are Fakes and Dupes." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 22 Apr. 2014