By Janet Street-porter
Social networking isn't just a pointless waste of time, because for a worrying number of young people it is proving to be harmful, if not deadly
Janet Street-Porter is no fuddy-duddy. But here, she reveals her growing alarm over young Britons' obsession with social networking websites...
A year ago, I wrote 'Life's definitely too short to log on to Facebook'. A series of tragic deaths has given that throwaway phrase a chilling new meaning.
Social networking isn't just - as I complained last year - a pointless waste of time, because for a worrying number of young people it is proving to be harmful, if not deadly.
Earlier this month, serial sex offender Peter Chapman was convicted of raping and murdering a sweet 17-year-old girl he initially contacted through Facebook using a fake identity.
Ashleigh Hall didn't get a choice about what to do with her life - it was brutally cut short by Chapman, who dumped her body in a field.
This week, there was further terrible news: 15-year-old Demi Wright, from North London, has been missing since Tuesday after leaving home for a rendezvous with a self- styled gangster she became obsessed with chatting to online.
And what about teenagers like Holly Grogan, Megan Gillan and Sam Leeson? Innocent, normal kids who took their lives after being bullied on social networking sites. What a waste.
My flippant remarks about the downside of Facebook provoked a huge debate. Some accused me of being a fuddy-duddy, the cyber equivalent of a grumpy old woman.
The truth is, however, that despite my fears there's nothing we can say or write to stop the relentless growth of social networking on the internet.
Kids may decide one site is more fashionable than another, but hooking up and making friends online has become a central part of modern life, whether we agree with it or not.
The singer Lily Allen might have declared she's logged off for good, but Facebook attracted 23 million new users in the first month of this year, an astonishing statistic.
Going online to chat is like taking crack. It's so addictive, you soon find yourself constantly tweeting, texting, messaging, emailing. Mostly harmless bilge, but for vulnerable teenagers it's a drug that can end in death
Tragedy: Holly Grogan committed suicide after being bullied online
The fact is, Facebook is unstoppable, so there's no point in talking about policing it, censoring it or shutting it down. It's too late for that.
Look at the sheer volume of stuff - more than five billion pieces of content, web links, news stories, blog posts and photos, are shared on the site worldwide each week.
How do you sift through a tsunami of trivia like that? And how long does it take to spot that something is unacceptable and remove it?
Facebook has 400 million users, the majority of whom are young.
When I asked the company how they control content to make sure it isn't violent, pornographic or unsuitable, they replied: 'We have a team of more than 100 professional reviewers based in our U.S. headquarters in Palo Alto and in Dublin, Ireland, and they work around the clock reviewing and taking action on user reports from around the world.
'They treat reports of harassing messages as a priority - acting on most within 24 hours.'
It doesn't take a degree in maths to calculate that of these specially trained men and women - assuming they work in 12-hour shifts - just 50 people or so are policing around 350 million pieces of content on each shift.
Clearly, this is impossible - so the system relies on users making complaints.
And if those users are already lying about their age and their sex and creating cyber versions of their personalities that bear very little resemblance to the real teenager or middle-aged paedophile, then it's expecting a lot from this motley army of users suddenly to morph into responsible net police, online Mr Plods who will spend time ratting on their mates for posting pictures of themselves holding guns, knives, or pictures of their naughty bits.
The most important thing to remember about young people using the internet is that they have little privacy in the real world.
Adolescents need a haven to escape to - and the internet provides the perfect place to set your own rules and talk to your chosen circle of confidants in a secret language.
In the past two years, the number of 12- to 15-year-olds with internet access in their bedrooms has soared from 20 to 35 per cent. These can be miserable, lonely, misunderstood kids.
Professor Sonia Livingstone, of the London School of Economics, found that Facebook was the sixth most popular social networking site among six to 11-year- olds, a fact that was buried in a report written by the media regulator Ofcom.
Although Facebook proudly tells us that their users have to be 13 to sign up, who's doing the checking?
An EU study of online behaviour found that 40 per cent of teenagers had seen pornography and 20 per cent had been bullied. They just accepted it as part of the experience.
The amount of time people now spend on social networking sites has soared to six hours a week - that's up more than 80 per cent in a year, and the longer we spend online, the harder it is to connect with the real world.
Psychologist Arthur Cassidy says that friendships forged via social networking sites and messaging services are different to those we make in the real world.
These online relationships can build up very quickly, they can be very secretive and, as a result, the people involved can feel special. It's like being in an exclusive club no one knows about. Emotionally, it's very intense.
People who work with children's charities can always tell the kids who have spent too much time online - they shun eye contact and have trouble connecting with other people.
They lack empathy. If kids are shy and insecure about their appearance or their conversational skills, then the internet seems like a great place to make friends and create a social scene - as Ashleigh Hall found out to her cost.
Online, she could be flirtatious and chatty to a complete stranger, something she would never have had the confidence to do in real life.
Proof that young people routinely create fantasy versions of themselves online is shown by the Information Commissioner's Office findings that 71 per cent of 14- to 21-year-olds said they would not want employers or colleges to do a web search on them before they have been given a chance to clean up their profiles.
Children don't encounter risks at school or at home as a result of the massive amount of health and safety legislation to prevent them getting harmed.
But we seem to have conveniently forgotten that when they sit in front of a computer screen they can be anywhere, doing anything, chatting to anyone.
Of course, parents can limit time online. But you can't police texts, messages and images 24 hours a day - it's as bonkers as Facebook trying to filter everything that goes through their website.
So, what's the solution? Facebook, like other social networking sites, believes that users have to self-regulate the world they inhabit online.
The firm told me: 'Facebook is based on a real-name culture - it is a violation of our policies to use a fake name or operate under a false identity - and we encourage people to report anyone they think is doing this. Facebook is highly self-regulating.'
Yet the site has refused to place the CEOP (the Child Exploitation And Online Protection Centre) warning button on their pages - claiming that their own system works more efficiently.
CEOP says it dealt with 115 cases of children who had been groomed by paedophiles on Facebook last year alone.
The site's managers counter that an under-age girl cannot receive messages from any adult who is not her friend, or a friend of a friend, or someone she shares a network with.
But if you create a fake identity and post a picture of an attractive man (as Peter Chapman did) and create a sexy, attractive persona, then it's easy to see how impressionable teenage girls might want to befriend you.
And how does anyone know a fake name when they read it? I've had plenty of emails from people with weird names. Haven't you?
There is another aspect of social networking which I find offensive, and that is clubs which are set up to discuss individuals without their permission.
For example, Amy Louise Paul was a normal 13-year-old, but her life changed completely after she had a disagreement with one of her friends, who set up a group on the internet called We Hate Amy Louise and tagged it 'for all of those people who hoped she would die already'.
Louise said the experience left her wanting to kill herself and now she is withdrawn and distressed.
It's not surprising that Childline gets more calls about cyber-bullying than any other topic.
In another twist, 27-year-old David Calvert was wrongly identified on Facebook as being Jamie Bulger's killer Jon Venables and 2,370 people joined a group to discuss the case.
The internet is held up as the ultimate organ of free speech, but this is just one example of how it can actually destroy an individual's human rights.
Finally, you might wonder why serial sex offenders such as Peter Chapman are even allowed access to the internet in the first place.
Convicted sex offenders have to register their addresses, dates of birth and National Insurance numbers with the police when they are released from jail.
In 2007, the Government decided to expand this requirement to include their email addresses and any identities they used on the internet.
The plan was to pass this information to social networking sites such as Facebook to prevent sex offenders from joining.
However, this has been blocked by a High Court ruling in 2008, after two sex offenders claimed that handing over this information indefinitely infringed their human rights.
The Home Office lost an appeal last summer, but the case is now going to the Supreme Court.
That might be a small crumb of comfort, but don't hold your breath. Panic buttons, content monitoring teams and registering sex offenders won't make any difference.
It's a jungle online, and it's too late to do anything about it. The police want to be able to spend a huge amount of time creating fake identities to entrap paedophiles.
I doubt it will make much difference in the end.
Social networking is not my cup of tea, but millions of fans claim it's enriched their lives. But for the young and vulnerable, it should be added to the list of addictions, like gambling, drink and drugs, that can cause terrible harm.
Censorship and control will have limited effect - our best hope is that teenagers treat their current passion for online friendship in the same way as they do with fashion and music - it's a passing trend which will lose its appeal the more it's adopted by the mainstream.
If Mum, Dad and the grandparents are on Facebook, then pretty soon the kids will have moved elsewhere.
source: dailymail
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