Facebook can be great. It can give people a chance to reconnect with friends and family members from their past, as well as help to keep us up to date with all that’s current. Many of us find great satisfaction in posting our daily habits, accomplishments, as well as new pictures of our kids, activities, and anything else we might like to share with the Facebook community. We share everything- our videos, lunch, vacation, pictures of our pets…any and everything we think others would be interested to see. Yes, Facebook can be fun, entertaining, informative and interesting; but there is also a bad side to Facebook. I have experienced the downside of Facebook in my family. I’m a mother of two boys and two girls; my youngest is only 2 so she is still too small to be drawn in by the allure of posting and sharing pictures. But my other three kids all have Facebook accounts, and all have been adversely affected by the ease with which vindictive people can hurt and embarrass others. Fake Profiles It is so easy for someone to impersonate another on Facebook. All they need to do is gain access to your real profile and download your photos to their computer. Then they concoct an email address or simply use one of theirs and a profile is born- complete with your name, address, and “personal information” which they can modify to their satisfaction. This has the power to ruin reputations as well as publicly embarrass individuals in the face of their friends, coworkers and other people important to their lives. My daughter who is now 18 had the unfortunate luck of being impersonated on Facebook. This profile remained on the web for over 2 years- publicly embarrassing her. Someone in our community constructed a fake profile of her depicting her as a promiscuous person and gave the public the impression that she was bragging about her conquests and certain sexual practices. This happened when she was still in high school, and the person sent friend requests to her real friends and even to her father. At one point the account had over 100 friends. The person was using the profile to pose as my daughter, and was even having conversations with guys about meeting them. Some guys that she knew commented that they had no idea she was like this, but that they liked it. We reported this account to Facebook on numerous occasions, but it remained on the internet. What was once a fun and informative social network became a nightmare for our family. There was nothing we could do to remove this profile. I had to resort to sending messages to individuals who were friends with the fake person informing them that the account was a fake. I don’t know whether this helped or not, but it gave us some form of control. My daughter couldn’t log on to Facebook anymore because she was afraid of what she would see, and it was no longer fun, or even safe to her. Finally, after about a year of giving up on the chance that the account would be removed, I tried one last time to report it. I noticed that this time the process was a little different, and I was allowed to state the reasons in my own words why the profile should be removed. It was finally removed from the internet. I guess the person gave up, because I'm sure they still had all her photos, but they have not made a new one just yet. That is one disadvantage of Facebook. Someone can always use a new email address to make a new profile of anyone. It may be successfully removed, but not before there is some damage done to the person’s reputation. Retaliations Another problem with Facebook is people can use it as a means to an end. I don’t use Facebook, except to monitor what my children do on the internet. I regularly check their accounts to ensure that they're not posting inappropriate material, and that they are not chatting with potentially dangerous people. My experience is that I’ve recently been in a disagreement with someone who apparently wished to publicly humiliate me. Since I don’t have a Facebook account, this person sent friend requests to my kids, and then posted some very disgusting things on their profiles. She did it in the form of comments on their photos, and they were there for all their friends to see. Of course, I couldn’t prove she was the one who did it, and all I could do was unfriend, report and block; but the damage was already done. Not everyone would use children to get back at someone, but there are some people who are vindictive enough to do so. This is why we need to be present and vigilant in what our kids are doing on the internet. General Rules for Safety A couple of rules I try to instill in my kids are: Only accept friend requests from people you know. Of course, they don’t always follow this rule, but it’s important to do at least some research before accepting the requests of strangers. Before accepting requests, check out the photos and information available to them. This may help in determining if the person is really who they claim to be. If the account has no pictures, or if there are only avatars or impersonal pictures of celebrities or random pictures, it would probably be a good idea to ignore the request. Are there any mutual friends? If there are a lot of friends in common, it may be okay to accept the request. If you're still not sure, you can ask one of the mutual friends if this is a real, trustworthy person. When did the person join Facebook? My kids received a request from someone who had joined Facebook only about 16 minutes ago, had no photos or friends, and sent requests to all three of them. That was a big red flag, as we could deduce that the same person had made a new account because the old one was blocked. Today-1
