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CASCADE TOWNSHIP, MI -- A Massachusetts man seeking to have sex with who he believed were a West Michigan woman's two young daughters was arrested in a sting operation Friday at Gerald R. Ford International Airport, federal officials say.

The arrest of Jonathan R. Ledoux on Friday, March 22, by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations agents at Ford Airport was the culmination of a months-long undercover operation, according to the criminal complaint filed against Ledoux in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids.

Ledoux is charged with attempted coercion and enticement of a minor and interstate travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. The first charge carries a minimum 10 years in prison. The second is punishable by up to 30 years.

Federal investigators allege Ledoux had been in contact since November 2018 with an agent claiming to be a Grand Rapids woman with two daughters ages 14 and 9.

Ledoux reached out to the agent on an online "incest chat room," and the pair later talked over KIK Messenger, an instant-messaging app, according to the complaint.

Over the next few months, Ledoux described numerous times his fantasies and intentions of having sex with the woman's daughters, the complaint alleges.

In December he sent the undercover agent a voice-recorded message outlining his fears that this could be a sting operation on child predators.

He said he didn't care so much about "public retribution or smearing of my own image" as he did his "elderly parents" learning about him being a child predator, the complaint states. To that end, he said he would go "perfectly quietly" if arrested.

In January he bought a plane ticket from Boston Logan International Airport to Ford Airport and planned to spend a weekend at the woman's home.

He was arrested after landing around noon March 22. In an interview with investigators after his arrest, Ledoux admitted he traveled to Grand Rapids to have sex with the children and that he was the person who had talked with the undercover agent, the complaint alleges.

He is due back in court Wednesday, March 27, for a hearing.

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Man arrested at Ford Airport in child predator sting operation

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CASCADE TOWNSHIP, MI -- A Massachusetts man seeking to have sex with who he believed were a West Michigan woman's two young daughters was arrested in a sting operation Friday at Gerald R. Ford International Airport, federal officials say. The arrest of Jonathan R. Ledoux on Friday, March 22, by U.S.

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What would happen if you were to "like" everything you saw on social media?

The developer Rameet Chawla found out when he built a script that liked every photo that passed through his Instagram feed.

He grew his followers by about 30 a day

He got invited to more parties

He got stopped on the street by people who recognized him from Instagram

He got message after message from friends encouraging him to post more. He said it was "almost like they were frustrated, like they were longing for something to like in return."

The likes, comments and posts we share on social media can often seem inconsequential, but they matter. They tap into some of the very elements that make us human, our addictions, desires, anxieties and joys.
What if we could understand the psychology of social media and use that knowledge to bring customers closer, give them more of what they want, and create better relationships?
I had the supreme privilege of talking about just that topic at Mozcon, a super fun and crazy informative marketing conference put on by our friends at Moz. I'm excited to share the highlights with you!

The pull of social media addiction isn't all in our heads. It's quite real, thanks to two chemicals our brains produce: dopamine and oxytocin.

Dopamine

Scientists used to think dopamine was a pleasure chemical in the brain, but now we know what it actually creates is want. Dopamine causes us to seek, desire, and search.

Dopamine is stimulated by unpredictability, by small bits of information, and by reward cues-pretty much the exact conditions of social media.

The pull of dopamine is so strong that studies have shown tweeting is harder for people to resist than cigarettes and alcohol.

Oxytocin

Then there's oxytocin, sometimes referred to as "the cuddle chemical" because it's released when you kiss or hug.

Or ... tweet. In 10 minutes of social media time, oxytocin levels can rise as much as 13% -a hormonal spike equivalent to some people on their wedding day.

And all the goodwill that comes with oxytocin-lowered stress levels, feelings of love, trust, empathy, generosity-comes with social media, too.

As a result, social media users have shown to be more trusting than the average Internet user. The typical Facebook user is 43% more likely than other Internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.

So between dopamine and oxytocin, social networking not only comes with a lot of great feelings, it's also really hard to stop wanting more of it.

Next, let's look at some of the major activities we do online and find out what psychological strings are being pulled with each of them.

Why we post on social media

It's not news that we love to talk about ourselves.

Humans devote about 30-40% of all speech to talking about themselves. But online that number jumps to about 80% of social media posts. That's a huge jump!

Why? Talking face-to-face is messy and emotionally involved-we don't have time to think about what to say, we have to read facial cues and body language.

Online, we have time to construct and refine. This is what psychologists call self-presentation: positioning yourself the way you want to be seen.

The feeling we get from self-presentation is so strong that viewing your own Facebook profile has been shown to increase your self-esteem.

What's also interesting for marketers is that the most prominent way we tend to work on self- presentation is through things- buying things and acquiring things that signify who we are.

Think: Clothes, games, music, the logo on your laptop right now.

The intensity of emotion people can feel for their favorite brands as a result of this is incredible. An experiment showed volunteers two types of photos: the logo for a brand they loved and pictures of their partners and closest friends.

Their physiological arousal to the logo was as intense as the arousal of looking at a picture of their closest friend.

Things-and by extension, brands-are a huge part of who we are.

What I take away from this is to work really hard to figure out what is aspirational about my brand that my customers can identify with.
Brands that can create aspirational ways for their community to interact with them not only create social media opportunities but also the chance to move beyond likes into something lasting.

If we like talking about ourselves so much, what would make us share something of someone else's?

Passing information on is an impulse that we're hard-wired with. Just the thought of sharing activates our brain's reward centers, even before we've done a thing.

Self-presentation, strengthening relationships

First, it comes back to our own self image: 68% of people say they share to give others a better sense of who they are and what they care about.

But the biggest reason we share is about other people: 78% of people say they share because it helps them to stay connected to people.

Experiments have shown that the best predictors of contagious ideas in the brain are associated with the parts that focus on thoughts about other people.

This means content designed for social media doesn't need to appeal to a large group or an average group. it just needs to appeal to a specific person.

Social currency

And when we share the right type of content, we gain social currency-our stock goes up. 62% of people say they feel better about themselves when people react positively to what they post on social media.

How can brands create social media currency? By having something interesting to say.

Jeff Goins wrote on our blog about this little-known research paper from the 1970s that attempts to create a unified theory of what makes something interesting.

The author, Murray Davis, says all interesting content is "an attack on the taken-for-granted world of their audience."

Like "the dress," things that are interesting deny our assumptions in some way; they shake us up.

Facebook, with more than 2 billion monthly active users is a great example of a platform where people love to like. In fact, since Facebook implemented the " Like " button, it has been used more than 1.13 trillion times, with that number growing by the day.

We do this because we want to maintain relationships. When we favorite and like each other's posts, we add value to the relationship, and reinforce that closeness.

We also create a reciprocity effect. We feel obliged to give back to people who have given to us, even in a small way. We want to even up the scales.

A sociologist sent Christmas cards to 600 random strangers and received 200 in return. That's the power of reciprocity.

You see reciprocity on Instagram as well, where receiving a tag or direct message makes you feel compelled to send one back. And anytime you receive a like on your profile, you'll probably feel a little pull to reciprocate in some way, whether it's by sharing something in return, signing up for an email list, etc.

Most marketers tend to think conversations with customers are hugely important. That engagement-interacting as much as possible-is what builds long-term advocacy.

So it's surprising to find that customers don't feel the same way. A survey of more than 7,000 consumers found that only 23% said they have a relationship with a brand. Of those who did, only 13% cited frequent interactions with the brand as a reason for having a relationship.

Consumers said shared values were a much bigger driver for a relationship than lots of interaction with a brand.

This is not to say that comments aren't powerful. In fact, they can be incredibly so-there's a phenomenon known as shared reality that says our whole experience of something is affected by if and how we share it with others.

85% of us say reading other people's responses on a topic helps us understand and process information and events.

This means comments actually have the power to change our minds, and science backs this up.

A study on news sites showed that comments that simply attack the author, with no facts at all, are enough to change our perception of a topic.

On the other hand, polite reviews - even when they're negative - cause a brand to be seen as more honest and wholesome. Users were actually willing to pay about $41 more for a watch when they saw polite negative reviews than when the reviews were removed.

Basically, any comment about you, anywhere online, is to a consumer a reflection of what kind of company you are. It's not exactly logical, but that's how our brains work.

This means being actively engaged in the comments section of your blog and with the customer reviews of your product is crucial, not so much to the person you're responding to but for everyone participating in the shared reality of comments and reviews.

So far we've just scratched the surface of what's interesting and unique about social media. Let's dive deeper into a few intriguing phenomenon for marketers.

Selfie craze

Historically, portraits have been about status, and controlling the way our image is perceived.

Today, they're a way to figure out who we are. The "looking-glass self" is a psychological concept that says that we can never truly see ourselves-we need our reflection from others in order to understand who we are.

Selfies also work because we pay more attention to faces than we do to anything else.

Viewing faces can also create empathy. An experiment added headshots of patients into doctors' files, and found that seeing photos of patients improved the way they treated patients.

For brands, there are many ways to harness the power of selfies-we've got a full breakdown here!

Most of us are not aware of it, but we mimic each others expressions in face-to-face conversation. This is emotional contagion, and it's a big part of how we build connectedness.

Online, we recreate that crucial element of empathy using emoticons and emoji.

Today, 92% of people in the U.S. regularly use stickers, emoticons or emojis in their online communication, and 10 billion emoji are sent around the world every day.

The most popular emoji: ?

And there is a strong link between emoji use and social media power.

There are plenty of fun ways to incorporate emoji into your marketing campaigns. Brands like Ikea, Coca-Cola, Burger King and Comedy Central have even created their own branded emoji for their fans to share.

Evan Wray at Swyft Media, which has worked on many of these branded emoji campaigns, says users see these in a really unique way-as self-expression, not advertising.

Sometimes social media-and life-moves so fast that we want things to slow down.

This is where nostalgia comes in, and this longing for the past can be an amazing strategy for modern social media marketing.

Nostalgia is universal across all cultures and it gives us a sense of social connectedness, feelings of being loved and protected.

That feeling makes us think different about money. When people are asked to think about the past, they're more likely to give money to others and they're willing to pay more for products.

These days we're speeding up nostalgia and creating a bigger and bigger appetite for it.

So you don't have to have hundreds of years of history to use nostalgia in your marketing. All you need is a time period that your target market is going to feel nostalgic about.

Urban Outfitters is now selling vintage Lisa Frank stickers and notebooks from the '80s and '90s. (Yes, the '90s are vintage-that's how fast nostalgia moves now.)

You can use Facebook insights, demographic and persona information to pick the period and then weave nostalgic references through your writing or social media posts.

If we're going to talk about the psychology of social media, we can't ignore the studies about its negative effects. Some say it's making us more lonely, more isolated, more depressed.

And the science behind this is very real-with the caveat that social media doesn't change us itself; it's just an extension of our human tendencies. It turns it up a little.

Like social comparison: we all have a tendency to assess our worth by comparing ourselves to others.

This can lead to feelings of insecurity-especially on Facebook, where we go to share our happiest, braggiest news. We're constantly comparing ourselves against a stream of new babies, engagements, new jobs.

This isn't just a Facebook issue; it happens on Instagram, where Instagram envy runs rampant, and on Pinterest, where a survey of 7,000 U.S. mothers revealed that 42 percent have "Pinterest stress" -they worry that they're not crafty or creative enough.

But social media can also unite us. If you've ever shared about a loss or a personal challenge on social media, you may have experienced the resounding support that can come from friends and even those you might not expect.

When we're feeling insecure, turning to Facebook offers more comfort than any other type of self-affirmation activity.

And spending time using social networks is correlated with virtual empathy, which carries over into the real world.

Have you ever wondered why animals are so popular on social media?

An interviewer asked the Buzzfeed editors who work on these stories why animals go so viral, and they said it's because these stories are often not really about animals at all. They often show humans at their best - rescuing, fostering, caring.

They said, "Our empathy for animals is us at our best."

Social media can gnaw at our insecurities and suck us in, but at its core, it's about the good in the world: seeing it in ourselves, recognizing it in others, passing it on.

It allows us to get a little closer, a little more empathetic, a little nearer to who we truly want to be. Brands have the opportunity to connect with us if they're willing to be human along with us - with all the messiness, anxieties and joys that comes with that.

Over to you!

I really enjoyed digging into the psychology of social media for Mozcon and for you here! I'd love to hear any thoughts this brings up for you in the comments. Meanwhile, you can check out the full presentation here:

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The Psychology of Social Media: Why We Like, Comment, and Share Online

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What would happen if you were to "like" everything you saw on social media? The developer Rameet Chawla found out when he built a script that liked every photo that passed through his Instagram feed.

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We think of Instagram as inherently aspirational, filled with ideas on how to live your best life. But the platform has also become a place to find inspiration of a different sort, the kind that makes mental health experts and Silicon Valley uncomfortable, to say the least.

Scouring for graphic self-injury photos is disturbingly easy on Instagram. Using ever-changing variants of words like #selfharm or #cutting, anyone can find a world that seemingly normalizes self-harm. And while Tumblr and Twitter also contain self-injury photos, a new study that looks at photos tagged with #cutting on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr found that the same app known for gratuitous selfies and #spon posts also hosted the greatest number of self-harm images.
Read more: The Misogynistic History of Trying to Understand Women Who Self-Harm
The question of how to respond when teenage users upload graphic, self-harm photos has plagued social media sites for years. Monitoring the rise of these photos is especially important because those who see a high-status friend engaging in self-harm are more likely to do so themselves, according to a study last year in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. The same study found that many of those who engage in deliberate self-injury first learned about it from a friend.

By most accounts, self-injury is widespread among adolescents. Researchers believe an estimated 14 to 26 percent of adolescents engage in the practice worldwide. A British charity found that 18,778 children aged 11 to 18 were admitted to hospitals for self harm from 2015 to 2016, a 14 percent rise from the previous year.

Instagram has made some strides in providing resources to those who are cutting. In 2016, the app rolled out a suite of reporting tools allowing users to flag friends' posts for self-harm imagery while partnering with forty organizations around the world to provide support. Today, if you search for #cutting on the app, you'll be referred to a help page with crisis line phone numbers (which you can also easily dismiss and continue viewing self-harm imagery.)

In a statement provided to Broadly, Instagram said it supported "enabling people to discuss self-injury or connect with others who have battled similar issues" but that the company has "zero tolerance for content that encourages users to embrace self-injury." Instagram also defended their policy of not censoring content.

"This is a complex issue, so we strive to go beyond simply removing content or making a hashtag unsearchable," the statement continued. "Instead we take a holistic approach, employing tools and education, and working in partnership with organizations who specialize in mental health issues."

Instagram is in a bind, experts say, because self-harm communities can't be counted on to police their behaviors and banning words or phrases is like playing a game of whack-a-mole. "If one hashtag is no longer allowed as a searchable term, they'll just misspell the word with extra letters or misspellings," says professor Jonathan Comer, the study's lead researcher.

Along with others, Comer is pushing for organizations to use the same hashtags as those who are self-injuring to provide resources to the afflicted. "One of our findings was how extraordinarily rare it is for posts to include any kind of recovery resources," he said. "That's certainly an area where we need to improve things."

Another hope is that AI will soon be able to predict those who are self-harming or suicidal and automatically push help their way. Facebook is already developing an algorithm that can flag certain words or phrases, prompting the dissemination of resources in real time. A study published in March found that machines can predict with 80 to 90 percent accuracy whether or not someone will attempt suicide as far as two years in the future by tracking their medical records, including pain medication prescriptions and ER visits.

"People can encourage one another to refrain from self-injurious behaviors as well. There's nothing in this area that suggests these communities are all bad or all good - it's very gray."

Comer says he doesn't know of efforts to teach computers to recognize imagery that predicts future self-harming behaviors but he's hopeful that researchers will be able to apply machine learning to that task as well. "I think NSSI [non-suicidal-self-injury] is going to be one of the next frontiers where we're going to see a lot of advances just based on what I know of my colleagues' work in this area," he said. "But overt imagery [that suggests someone is considering suicide] might be a little easier to track."

While it's easy to paint self-harming communities online with one brush, some users have found a "sense of community and support" by connecting with other self-harmers online, according to a meta study from 2015. In one of the surveys cited, a participant remarked, "Seeing these pictures gives me a sense of release and calm: it curbs my urges to cut."
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"Finding like-minded communities, even if they might be organized around self-harm - can actually have some positive effects," Comer says. "People can encourage one another to refrain from self-injurious behaviors as well. There's nothing in this area that suggests these communities are all bad or all good - it's very gray."

The problem, as he sees it, is that the world of pain can seem never-ending, as if cutting is a social phenomenon on par with taking photos of your food. "When you see these things, when you search for certain words, it can seem like what you find is everywhere," he said. That, in turn, can easily distort your perceptions of "normal" behavior. "It's not just about telling teens, 'don't post,' but about educating them to be savvier consumers of social media."

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The Challenges of Blocking Self-Harm Imagery on Social Media

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We think of Instagram as inherently aspirational, filled with ideas on how to live your best life. But the platform has also become a place to find inspiration of a different sort, the kind that makes mental health experts and Silicon Valley uncomfortable, to say the least.

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After Molly took her own life in 2017, her family were given access to their daughter's social media accounts and were alarmed by the content she'd been following. They found distressing material about depression and suicide on her Instagram account, and her father Ian has publicly blamed the social media platform for its part in the death of his daughter. It also emerged that Pinterest emailed Molly a month after she died with 14 graphic images showing self-harm.

Since Molly's story came to light, the government has promised to do more to tackle harmful social media content, with suicide prevention minister Jackie Doyle-Price saying this week that the tech giants must "step up" to protect vulnerable users, and digital minister Margot James insisting that she "will introduce laws that force social media platforms to remove illegal content, and to prioritise the protection of users beyond their commercial interests."

Clicking on "Learn More" takes you through to a page on Instagram's website which reads "Can We Help?" and gives you the options to message a friend or someone you trust, to call or text a trained volunteer, or to get tips and suggestions of ways to support yourself.

While other harmful topics appear to have been blocked completely on Instagram, searching for 'self harm' still brings up handles which contain the words. Some accounts are private, others are not. Within a minute of browsing through these accounts, you can find alternative self-harm hashtags in image captions that are currently in use, which are often amalgams of similar words and phrases. This, coupled with the fact that Instagram's algorithm is engineered to show people content they're interested in, has led to allegations that Instagram is 'complicit' in deaths like Molly's.

They continued: "While we conduct this review, over the past week we have had a team of engineers working round the clock to make changes to make it harder for people to search for and find self-harm content. We have further restricted the ability for anyone to find content by searching for hashtags and in the Explore pages, and we are stopping the recommendation of accounts that post self-harm content."

On Pinterest, searching similar trigger terms brings up a warning: "If you're in emotional distress or thinking about suicide, help is available," with a link to the Samaritans website. Pinterest told us it "just made a significant improvement to prevent our algorithms from recommending sensitive content in users' home feeds," and will soon introduce "more proactive ways to detect and remove it, and provide more compassionate support to people looking for it."

A Twitter spokesperson told Refinery29 that "protecting the health of the public conversation is core to our mission". They added: "This includes ensuring young people feel safe on our service and are aware of our policies and products which are purposefully designed to protect their experience on our service." It provides information about suicide prevention on the app and on the web and a form to report self-harm content.

Harmful content is also going undetected by social media platforms under the guise of outwardly positive hashtags like #mentalhealthawareness, #mentalhealth or #suicideprevention, says Charlotte Underwood, 23, a mental health advocate, freelance writer and suicide survivor who frequently sought out harmful content online during her teenage years. "While these hashtags are used a lot for people who are advocating and trying to find ways to help reduce mental health stigma, sometimes you find triggering pictures and posts that are worrying," she tells Refinery29. "Though sometimes this means that the person posting can be helped and supported, which is a positive, despite the dangers of triggering posts."

All people need to do is type in the words in a search bar and they can find it. The truth is, it's not difficult to find this content and that's a huge problem.

Charlotte Underwood, 23, mental health advocate and writer

The truth is, harmful content is readily available all over the internet - not just on social media - which the government seems to be forgetting. "Initially the content I looked up wasn't on social media, which is really important to note - this content has always existed outside of social media and will likely continue to exist outside of social media; the problem doesn't start and end there," says 25-year-old Lisa, a mental health advocate and blogger, who self-harmed daily and had persistent suicidal thoughts in her younger years. "In the beginning it was forums and sites I'd found on Google. I think I'd been researching the 'best' methods of harming myself and went down a rabbit hole."

Many experts in mental health and social media also believe the government's latest proposal doesn't go far enough. Andy Bell, deputy chief executive at the Centre for Mental Health, told Refinery29 that while "there may be merits in exploring a 'duty of care' for social media providers," it's not black and white. "We need a more balanced debate about the potential benefits of social media interaction for young people's mental health, as well as seeking to ensure that safety is prioritised."

Sonia Livingstone, an LSE professor who specialises in children's rights on- and offline, and a blogger on digital parenting, says she's yet to see adequate statistics on how much harmful content is available or how accessible it is. "That's part of the problem. If there is legislation, how will we track improvements?"

Tom Madders, campaigns director at YoungMinds, wants social media companies to take responsibility for the potentially dangerous impact of their algorithms, "making sure that [they] actively promote mental health support rather than steering users towards similarly distressing material."

If you are thinking about suicide, please contact Samaritans on 116 123. All calls are free and will be answered in confidence.

If you or someone you know is considering self-harm, please get help. Call Mind on 0300 123 3393 or text 86463.

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Self-Harm & Suicide Content Remains Rife On Social Media - As We Found Out

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After Molly took her own life in 2017, her family were given access to their daughter's social media accounts and were alarmed by the content she'd been following. They found distressing material about depression and suicide on her Instagram account, and her father Ian has publicly blamed the social media platform for its part in the death of his daughter.

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#socialmedia #suicide #facebook #instagram #selfharm

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Given the alarming rise in teen suicide, Adam Mosseri, the recently appointed head of Instagram, is moving to limit all images and posts that show any element of self-harm.

Mosseri announced earlier this month, that "we need to do more to keep the most vulnerable people who use Instagram safe."

To do so, Instagram has started to roll out sensitivity screens, changes that will filter out inappropriate content relating to suicide and self-harm. The changes include blurring out self-harm images, and these images will no longer appear in search, hashtags, or account recommendations.

After what Mosseri says was a comprehensive review with global experts and academics on youth, mental health and suicide prevention, we're announcing further changes to our approach on self-harm content, the site is implementing the following changes:
What's changing

1. We will not allow any graphic images of self-harm, such as cutting on Instagram - even if it would previously have been allowed as admission. We have never allowed posts that promote or encourage suicide or self harm, and will continue to remove it when reported.

2. We will not show non-graphic, self-harm related content - such as healed scars - in search, hashtags and the explore tab, and we won't be recommending it. We are not removing this type of content from Instagram entirely, as we don't want want to stigmatize or isolate people who may be in distress and posting self-harm related content as a cry for help.

3. We want to support people in their time of need - so we are also focused on getting more resources to people posting and searching for self-harm related content and directing them to organizations that can help.

4. We're continuing to consult with experts to find out what more we can do, this may include blurring any non-graphic self-harm related content with a sensitivity screen, so that images are not immediately visible.

"Up until now, we've focused most of our approach on trying to help the individual who is sharing their experiences around self-harm," said Mosseri. "We have allowed content that shows contemplation or admission of self-harm because experts have told us it can help people get the support they need. But we need to do more to consider the effect of these images on other people who might see them. This is a difficult but important balance to get right."

The goal is to have no graphic self-harm or graphic suicide related content on Instagram and to significantly reduce - with the goal of removing - all self-harm and suicide imagery from hashtags, search, the explore tab or as recommended content, while still ensuring we support those using Instagram to connect with communities of support.

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Social Media Platforms Aim to Fight Trend in Teen Suicide - KDLT

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Share This:FacebookGoogle+LinkedinPinterestTwitterGiven the alarming rise in teen suicide, Adam Mosseri, the recently appointed head of Instagram, is moving to limit all images and posts that show any element of self-harm. Mosseri announced earlier this month, that "we need to do more to keep the most vulnerable people who use Instagram safe."

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#socialmedia #suicide

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"There's no doubt that Instagram played a part in Molly's death." The words of a father grieving his teenage daughter's suicide, published today in an interview with the UK's Sunday Times newspaper, will carry loud and clear all the way to Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, California. The specifics here, as with other similar cases, represent a family tragedy. For social media in general, and Facebook in particular, the question now is how will they respond.

This comes as the news breaks that Facebook plans to integrate Instagram (and WhatsApp) much more tightly with its core, enabling users across all three platforms to share messages and information more easily - and of course to continue to leverage the advertising power of the brands and their unrivaled data and reach. Facebook is under immense pressure following criticism from many quarters for data exploitation, lack of privacy controls, information security and dubious data trading. This has serious implications for the glossy world of Instagram and its influencers, notwithstanding the tragic accusations now being leveled.
Facebook Takes Control
It's notable that until now, Instagram has managed to remain healthily detached from the issues that have plagued Facebook over the last twelve months. Instagram revenue has soared towards double-digit billions as it leverages the power of Facebook's ad platform, albeit there may be a knock-on from ads being pulled from Facebook in light of its recent troubles.

That said, the expectation from many is that Instagram is set to become the dominant growth driver within Facebook, accounting for the majority of its ad revenues. More than 1 billion active monthly users. More than 4 billion daily 'likes'. And brands generating tenfold the engagement on Instagram over Facebook. These are the stats that matter in the world of social media advertising.

It hasn't all been smooth sailing, of course, and there were potential warning signs when Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger quit the social media giant last year. The implication was that this was prompted by the same loss of autonomy that prompted WhatsApp's founders to do the same. But that hasn't yet stalled growth or taken the filtered gloss from the photo platform.

Alongside Google (and to a lesser extent Amazon), Facebook has been accused of perpetrating the "surveillance capitalism" that has turned billions of people around the world into a commodity product, there for the taking with staggeringly efficient and effective algorithms ensuring that almost everything we see is designed to pull dollars from our pockets or shape our mindsets.

As venture capitalist Roger McNamee, a key early influence on Mark Zuckerberg, told Time last week: "To feed its AI and algorithms, Facebook gathered data anywhere it could. Before long, Facebook was spying on everyone, including people who do not use Facebook. Unfortunately for users, Facebook failed to safeguard that data. Facebook sometimes traded the data to get better business deals. These things increased user count and time-on-site, but it took another innovation to make Facebook's advertising business a giant success."

Instagram could not be better suited to data farming of this kind. It is the clear global leader in the social media 'influencer' bubble that has become the marketer's ultimate dream. By some estimates, the value of this influencer market is set for fivefold growth from 2017 to 2020, reaching as much as $10 billion.
The 2018 Turning Point
Facebook is seeking to recover the loss of public trust following a year of PR fire-fighting. Cambridge Analytica shone a brighter light than ever before on the ugly world of data-trading, and that was followed by data breaches and alleged links to Russia and the Brexit and Trump campaigns. We will not soon forget the tortuous sight of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in front of Congress in April.

Not that Instagram hasn't faced battles of its own. As the platform has commercialized, the blurred lines between sharing and influencing have become much more of an issue. Over the last 12 months, the platform has come under increasing pressure to ensure its "insta celebs" come clean on which photos they are being paid or rewarded for posting. Following a regulatory investigation, last week a number of its biggest stars agreed to provide far more transparency, even where rewards came in the form of "out of the blue" freebies.

But the news in recent days that families have accused Instagram, alongside other platforms such as Pinterest, with hosting and distributing content that has contributed to mental health issues and subsequent suicides of teens could be one of the toughest tests yet for the platform. And coming at the same time as Facebook stock analysts highlight the monetization potential of Instagram as the primary driver of future Facebook growth this is bad timing, to say the least.

In his interview, the father of Molly Russell said that "the more I looked, the more there was that chill horror that I was getting a glimpse into something that was unknown to me and had such profound effects on my lovely daughter. We went to one [account] Molly was following and what we found was just horrendous. They seemed to be completely encouraging of self-harm, linking depression to self-harm and to suicide, making it seem inevitable, normal, graphically showing things like cutting, biting, burning, bruising, taking pills. It was there, hiding in plain sight. We only looked at two sites because they were so harrowing and that's what began it."

In an investigation, the newspaper then created a fake 14-year-old's account on Pinterest with the right triggers to test the algorithm. Sure enough, pictures relating to suicide came through. And when the same newspaper made more than twenty complaints to Instagram about similar images, they were all rejected.

Facebook's VP for Northern Europe told the BBC that he was "deeply upset" at the accusations, albeit "this is a really complicated issue," and "an incredibly tricky area to get right."

Matt Hancock, the UK's Health Secretary, has now written to social media platforms, telling them that "it is appalling how easy it still is to access this content online and I am in no doubt about the harm this material can cause, especially for young people. It is time for internet and social media providers to step up and purge this content once and for all."
Recovering Trust
These are trying times for Facebook, in an op-ed this week for the Wall Street Journal, Mark Zuckerberg said that "for us, technology has always been about putting power in the hands of as many people as possible. If you believe in a world where everyone gets an opportunity to use their voice and an equal chance to be heard, where anyone can start a business from scratch, then it's important to build technology that serves everyone. That's the world we're building for every day, and our business model makes it possible."

The devil, as they say, is in the detail.

Also this week, it has been revealed that Facebook plans to integrate the back-end platforms underpinning its own messaging service with those of its two marquee acquisitions: WhatsApp and Instagram. The quid pro quo from the company has been a promise to increase the use of end-to-end encryption, the add-on that has cemented WhatsApp's position as the premier instant messaging platform, globally. The challenge for Facebook is that the business driver for the integration is information sharing, allowing users to message cross-platforms, and, of course, data exploitation. Facebook's track-record in privacy and security has left a lot to be desired this year. It has been no surprise that the news of this integration has sent alarm bells ringing everywhere except in the offices of rivals such as Signal, Wickr and Telegram.
Will Anything Actually Change?
Facebook stock analysts are big fans of Instagram. Its business model has proven resilient to scale and scandal. It continues to commercialize. It has been the greatest driver of pop culture in the latest phase of social media growth and expansion, largely seeing off its smaller but more innovative rival Snapchat.

But it is clear that Facebook will need to deal with content policing far more effectively to keep Instagram's glossy filter intact. It has become the go-to for the young, hardest to reach demographic that has largely turned away from Facebook's core. Perhaps the greatest trick Zuckerberg and his team pulled off over recent years is to continue to grow Instagram (and WhatsApp) whilst 'half-kidding' the user bases that they were associated with, rather than part of, the main platform. That game may now be well and truly over.

If the privacy, data and trust issues that have hit Facebook now pollute these other businesses, it will be a major issue and one that will hit the bottom line. And if that happens, there will be plenty more op-eds and advertising campaigns required.

[The title of this post has changed since it was first published.]

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Instagram 'Implicated' In Teen Suicides As It Prepares To Merge With Facebook

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"There's no doubt that Instagram played a part in Molly's death." The words of a father grieving his teenage daughter's suicide, published today in an interview with the UK's Sunday Times newspaper, will carry loud and clear all the way to Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, California.

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Murder Games: The Life And Death Of Breck Bednar

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approach Lorin LaFave's house in Caterham, Surrey, set back and unlit on a long dark road. My fear is that she's behind the door, dreading my arrival. I'm thinking how difficult it will be for her to go over the grooming and murder of her son Breck yet again - and how difficult it must be to talk about Murder Games, a BBC documentary that unpicks each turn of the case, with interviews, analysis and sinister re-enactments. Very soon, though, Lorin curled up by the fire sipping tea in a silent house, I realise that recounting how her eldest child was lured to his death is no more or less difficult than anything else - getting up each morning, shopping, attending parents' evening with her remaining three children. "It's all equally hard and I kind of dread everything," she says.
"I do these things - I do everything in a robotic way, forcing my body when, really, I'd rather sit and hide and disappear because the pain this has caused is just too deep."

Murder Games is a hard programme to watch, harrowing beyond belief, but probably essential viewing for all teenagers, and teenage boys in particular. To be shown on BBC3, it will come with website links, access to advice and information on internet safety. There has also been a separate screening for teachers and charity workers via BBC Learning and BBC Outreach. "The reason I agreed to the programme is that I can't bear to have lost the most precious thing to me for nothing," says Lorin. "I want everyone to understand the dangers."

Lorin's story starts with a son who, like so many other boys, loved gaming. Breck was born in 1999 - his American parents, Lorin and Barry, had come to the UK two years before for Barry's work as an oil trader. Two years later, their triplets were born - Carly, Chloe and Sebastian, now 14. Though Barry and Lorin separated in 2006, Barry remained close, having the children every other weekend.

"From the start, Breck loved fixing things, taking them apart, putting them together," says Lorin. "At school, Breck wasn't with the footballers, he wasn't competitive. He was in the 'Lego gang' - a little group who made rockets and guns and ran around playing out little fantasies."

Later, computers drew him in. "He dismantled and rebuilt them," says Lorin. "We didn't buy the set-up he had. He was very resourceful, saving birthday and Christmas money, selling and exchanging parts."

Though Breck excelled in school and was an A* student, Lorin describes him as chilled. "He never yelled, swore, slammed the door. He'd come home, get his homework done, his chores out of the way, then go online."

Online, Breck would game. At 14, he was invited into an online gaming group - a 'virtual clubhouse' - by school friends. "Breck's bedroom door was always open and he'd sit, with headphones on," says Lorin. "There was a gaming screen where they might be on a battlefield, a screen with icons for the boys who were online and another screen for live messaging, with images or music or YouTube clips - whatever they were talking about.

"I have to say, I'd rather sit and talk face to face but I could see why they liked it. It was very interactive, social. I could hear everything they were saying - I loved hearing Breck's laugh - and there was nothing very sinister."

Except for one thing - the ringmaster, whose server they played on. While the other members were known to Breck or his friends, Lewis Daynes was not someone they knew in real life.

He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company. Sometimes he was in New York, working for the US government. Other times, he was in Dubai, or off to Syria. "To Breck, who still had his baby teeth and saw no evil in the world, Daynes seemed very cool, very exciting," says Lorin.

When Lorin walked into Breck's room, he'd say, "My mum's come in." While the other boys would go quiet - a mum is enough to silence most teenage boys, Daynes would say, 'Hey, Mum!' and start some banter. When she'd just returned from a dance class, he'd send a dancing lady across the screen.

"I might ask what was going on in New York, and he'd say, 'Not a lot ...'

"I'd ask why he wasn't out with friends on a Friday night and he'd say he was too tired. My fear was that he was some 40-year-old paedophile sitting in his underpants."

As the months passed, Dayne's presence loomed larger. "I'd get a lot of 'Lewis says ...'," Lorin says. "'Lewis says I don't need to finish school as he can get me a Microsoft apprenticeship when I turn 16.' 'Lewis says as I don't drink or smoke and do well in school, I should be allowed to game as long as I want ...'"

It became harder to get Breck offline, to do his homework or his chores. ("Lewis says I shouldn't have to do chores as it's the triplets who make the mess.") When Lorin walked into Breck's room, Daynes now sent images of wicked witches or goose-stepping Hitlers on screen. "I'd be telling Breck to get offline and he'd literally have Dayne's voice in his earphones telling him not to listen. I could see Breck's face, torn between me or his cool mentor who had the whole world going for him."

Lorin believes if it was a daughter enthralled by an online stranger, she would have been taken more seriously. "I worked as a teaching assistant, I asked staff, teachers, other parents and not one person thought it sounded dangerous," she says. "They'd say, 'Oh, that's what boys do.' Or 'My son was a gamer - he grew out of it.'"

Both Lorin and Barry offered to take Breck to meet Daynes. "I wanted him to not show up and prove he wasn't who he claimed to be, but Daynes wouldn't. He was too busy with 'important work'."

In December 2013, Lorin could take no more. "I knew I needed to do something so I did the biggest thing I could and dialled the police on 101. I told the call handler what I'd heard, what I feared. She obviously didn't understand online grooming. She asked if Breck could just play on another website or if I could ask Lewis not to contact my son again. If it was that easy, I'd have done it! I gave her Lewis Dayne's full name and his county - and by the end, I honestly believed he'd be checked in the Police National Computer."

Had this happened, police would have seen that Lorin had good reason to be afraid. Lewis Daynes had led a troubled life - his parents had divorced, his mother had left the country, he'd spent time in the care of his grandmother and his local authority. Now 18, he was unemployed, living alone in an Essex flat where he bought server space and used it to game with teenage boys. In 2011, he'd been accused of raping a boy and possessing indecent images, though he was not charged.

"In my dream life, the police look him up, then come and tell Breck who Daynes really is," says Lorin.

Instead, she heard nothing. She confiscated Breck's computer equipment and organised a meeting with Barry, Breck, another boy from the gaming group and his parents where they set out their suspicions.

But Daynes was one step ahead. He couriered a phone to Breck so they could communicate and persuaded Breck to record the meeting about him so he knew what was said. "From then on, he knew we were on to him," says Lorin. "It sent everything underground."

Realising that time was running out, police have now established that Daynes began to claim he was ill and dying - too weak to run his company. He'd decided to hand it over to Breck, if Breck could come to his flat in Essex and learn how to take it over.

It's not the grooming we associate with girls and predatory paedophiles, nor the kind we warn our children to watch for. "This wasn't sexting," says Lorin. "Police didn't find a single image or text about bodies or sex. Breck thought their relationship was about technology and computers."

Daynes, meanwhile, was out buying duct tape and condoms.

On Sunday 16 February 2014, Breck took a £100 taxi ride to Daynes's home (Daynes paid). It was the start of half term and he was staying with his father, but told him he was going to his friend Tom's to build a new server. Later, he texted to ask if he could stay the night there.

What happened in Daynes's flat is still unknown. "Unfortunately, you do try to imagine," says Lorin.

"At some point, the tables turned and Breck must have thought, oh my God, my mum was right - and it would have been too late. My heart breaks to think how scared he must have been to be tied up and gagged and stabbed by someone he trusted so much."

Dayne's utterly calm, utterly chilling 999 call on the Monday morning is played on the opening of Murder Games. "My friend and I got into an altercation ... and I'm the only one who came out alive."

Barry and Lorin's life now crossed into the realms of a horror flick. Daynes had cut Breck's throat, photographed his body and sent the image to other members of the gaming group. The news quickly spread between phones to reach Breck's siblings just as police were informing their father.

Daynes later pleaded guilty to murder with sexual and sadistic motivation and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

"It's incomprehensible," says Lorin. "I have to carry on for the other children, but I've aged 100 years. The triplets lost their youth. They went from 12 to teen, from 'yay, happy, poopoo' to 'duct tape, murder, stabbing'. I didn't know Daynes was a murderer but I knew he was dangerous. All I'd done with police, with other parents, with Breck, all the rules I'd had, the talking we did ... it all failed."

Before the funeral, while they were still waiting for Breck's body to be released, Lorin decided to set up the Breck Foundation to raise awareness on internet safety. She speaks at schools, conferences, to parents and police.

"When I was worried about Breck, no one I turned to understood or knew what I should do," she says. "Boys may report this less but I want everyone to understand that they can be groomed and hurt - maybe not murdered but hurt in other ways - by people who are not who they say they are online. I want police to understand what grooming is so that when a parent calls with a name, it will go into the system.

"There's nothing worse than thinking you could have saved your child and didn't. I cannot bear for another family to go through this."

* Murder Games: The Life and Death of Breck Bednar is on BBC3 on 26 January, 9pm. Information on the Breck campaign: breckbednar.com

The father's story: Barry Bednar

"I think the programme shows children, parents and teachers how quickly something can change from good to bad. At the beginning, the gaming seemed like fantastic fun - when Breck first showed me I thought it was the coolest thing. And for Breck, it wasn't just the games. He built his own computers, he was into coding, he was passionate about technology. It turned horrible very fast.

Lorin and I were separated but I'd always seen a lot of Breck. We were very close. We talked all the time - even when he was playing that crazy game, he'd always get off when I called. He'd game when he was at my house too. I'd hear Daynes's voice but Daynes never talked to me the way he talked to Lorin, maybe because I'm a man. I was worried, though. I knew his stories were outlandish. No 17-year-old would be running a major consulting firm, working for the US defence. Like Lorin, I thought he might be a paedophile and I told Breck that if he wanted to keeping talking to this guy, I needed to meet him first. I offered to go along with Breck to meet Daynes but that never materialised.

By the December before Breck was murdered, I was worried enough to move back from London to be very close. I had the children for half term and when Breck told me he was going to see a friend, I was happy that he was doing something that wasn't online. Later, when he texted to say he wanted to stay the night, that they'd ordered pizza, I was still happy. We really don't know if Breck sent the text himself or what happened that day or evening. I can only hope that, at first, he did have fun. I've been to Daynes's flat - it's a dump. But perhaps, to a 14-year-old, this place with no parents was great.

There's no word for the impact except devastating. One thing that gets me through is seeing families like the McCanns, or the parents of Milly Dowler who was missing for six months before her body was found. At least we know where Breck is. We know the person who killed him and he's in jail.

As a parent you're supposed to look after your child. We knew there was a problem but still Breck was murdered. If the police had looked Daynes up and told Breck that he wasn't who he claimed to be, that probably would have stopped everything. I believe that if Breck had been a girl, we'd have been taken more seriously."

Online grooming: What you need to know

A new friendship or relationship may not appear to be about sex - there may be no sexual references as the groomer builds the relationship. It might not make your child uncomfortable, so it can be hard to recognise that they are being groomed. Breck enjoyed his relationship with Daynes.

It may take others to spot what is really going on - perhaps another teenager worried that a friend is being controlled. Maybe that teenager confides in a parent. That parent isn't sure whether to intervene. Young people should be on their guard not just for themselves but for other children. Act on concerns by telling a parent or teacher.

If you are worried that a child or young person is being groomed online, report it to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. All reports are reviewed by child protection social workers. The Child sex offender disclosure scheme (Sarah's Law) allows the public to check whether people in contact with their children have a criminal record for child sex offences.

To discuss concerns initially, call the NSPCC Helpline 0800 800 5000

More information: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

* This article was amended on 23 January 2016. The title of the BBC documentary was corrected from War Games to Murder Games.

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I couldn't save my child from being killed by an online predator

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approach Lorin LaFave's house in Caterham, Surrey, set back and unlit on a long dark road. My fear is that she's behind the door, dreading my arrival.

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The photos involved images of teens as young as 14 and were taken from legitimate social media sites without their permission.

It is now feared that the photos were deliberately uploaded to the site.

Photos were then 'harvested' and used without permission to promote the seedy site.

Details of the scam only emerged when one of the girls was perturbed by a remark that she looked very much like a model on a porn site. A quick investigation revealed that it was her image that was being used on the site.

In another case, a young woman became concerned at comments that an image on the site resembled one of her friends. When she went to investigate, she was sickened to realise that several of her friend's social media pictures had been uploaded to the site.

The scale of the scam only emerged when one of the women contacted Cork's RedFM in a bid to warn other teenagers. A social media alert was then issued so that teenage girls could take steps to protect any images they had uploaded.

Katie Kirwin (19), from Cork, said she was initially shocked at seeing her photos on the site, but is now furious at what was done.

"I was upset yesterday but I'm just really angry about it today," she said.

Katie said some of the photos dated back to when she was aged only 14.

"I wish it was just one photo but it was actually a thread of my photos. You would see every photo of me since I was 14-years-old up to just before I turned 19," she said.

"I want to make it clear that these are all photos of my face - the face of a 14-year-old child. Most of them aren't showing anything other than my face."

Katie said none of the photos were in any way provocative. What sickened her most was the vile comments posted about them on the site. "Some of the comments are absolutely disgusting. They are vile," she said.

Another woman checked the site when she became concerned some of her friends' images were on it. "It is mostly Cork girls, from what I can see," she said.

Irish Independent

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Teen girls' horror as social media photos appear on porn site - Independent.ie

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The photos involved images of teens as young as 14 and were taken from legitimate social media sites without their permission. It is now feared that the photos were deliberately uploaded to the site. Photos were then 'harvested' and used without permission to promote the seedy site.

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Their study, #StatusofMind, surveyed almost 1,500 young people aged 14 to 24 on how certain social media platforms impact health and well-being issues such as anxiety, depression, self-identity and body image.

YouTube was found to have the most positive impact, while Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter all demonstrated negative affects overall on young people's mental health.

Instagram -- the image-saturated app with over 700 million users worldwide -- topped the list in terms of negative impact, most notably among young women, stated the report, published Friday.

Instagram draws young women to "compare themselves against unrealistic, largely curated, filtered and Photoshopped versions of reality," said Matt Keracher, author of the report.

"Instagram easily makes girls and women feel as if their bodies aren't good enough as people add filters and edit their pictures in order for them to look 'perfect,' " an anonymous female respondent said in the report.

To tackle the problem, the Royal Society for Public Health has called for social media platforms to take action in order to help combat young users' feelings of inadequacy and anxiety by placing a warning on images that have been digitally manipulated.

"We're not asking these platforms to ban Photoshop or filters but rather to let people know when images have been altered so that users don't take the images on face value as real," Keracher said.

"We really want to equip young people with the tools and the knowledge to be able to navigate social media platforms not only in a positive way but in a way that promotes good mental health," he added.

The survey concluded that while Instagram negatively affected body image, sleep patterns and added to a sense of "FOMO" -- the fear of missing out -- the image app was also a positive outlet for self-expression and self-identity for many of its young users.

Professional YouTuber Laci Green, a health vlogger with 1.5 million subscribers, said that education surrounding mental health issues in a digital age is an educational imperative for young people.

"Because platforms like Instagram and Facebook present highly curated versions of the people we know and the world around us. It is easy for our perspective of reality to become distorted," she said. "Socializing from behind a screen can also be uniquely isolating, obscuring mental health challenges even more than usual."

Green added that it is important we lay the groundwork now to minimize potential harm as the first generation of social media users become adults.

YouTube was the only social media platform that demonstrated an overall positive impact on young people's mental health in the study.

The report also found that it's not just what young people are engaging with on social media but also how long they are engaging with it.

Young people who spend more than two hours per day connecting on social networking sites are more likely to report poor mental health, including psychological distress, according to the report.

"Platforms that are supposed to help young people connect with each other may actually be fueling a mental health crisis," Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the royal society, noted in the report.

To address this, the society has also recommended the introduction of a pop-up warning to alert users that they have been online for too long.

Seven in 10 young people surveyed supported the recommendation, but with experts describing social media use as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, it's not clear whether a "heavy usage" pop-up would be enough to break through that barrier.

Sir Simon Wessely, president of the UK's Royal College of Psychiatrists, supports an education-based approach and warns that demonizing social media is not the answer.

"I am sure that social media plays a role in unhappiness, but it has as many benefits as it does negatives," he said. "We need to teach children how to cope with all aspects of social media -- good and bad -- to prepare them for an increasingly digitized world. There is real danger in blaming the medium for the message."

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instagram worst app for young people's mental health - cnn

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Instagram worst app for young people's mental health

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Their study, #StatusofMind, surveyed almost 1,500 young people aged 14 to 24 on how certain social media platforms impact health and well-being issues such as anxiety, depression, self-identity and body image. YouTube was found to have the most positive impact, while Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter all demonstrated negative affects overall on young people's mental health.

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The same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are activated when teenagers see large numbers of "likes" on their own photos or the photos of peers in a social network, according to a first-of-its-kind UCLA study that scanned teens' brains while using social media.

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Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - The Atlantic

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Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - The Atlantic

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More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they're on the brink of a mental-health crisis.

Jasu Hu

One day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone-she's had an iPhone since she was 11-sounding as if she'd just woken up. We chatted about her favorite songs and TV shows, and I asked her what she likes to do with her friends. "We go to the mall," she said. "Do your parents drop you off?," I asked, recalling my own middle-school days, in the 1980s, when I'd enjoy a few parent-free hours shopping with my friends. "No-I go with my family," she replied. "We'll go with my mom and brothers and walk a little behind them. I just have to tell my mom where we're going. I have to check in every hour or every 30 minutes."

Those mall trips are infrequent-about once a month. More often, Athena and her friends spend time together on their phones, unchaperoned. Unlike the teens of my generation, who might have spent an evening tying up the family landline with gossip, they talk on Snapchat, the smartphone app that allows users to send pictures and videos that quickly disappear. They make sure to keep up their Snapstreaks, which show how many days in a row they have Snapchatted with each other. Sometimes they save screenshots of particularly ridiculous pictures of friends. "It's good blackmail," Athena said. (Because she's a minor, I'm not using her real name.) She told me she'd spent most of the summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. That's just the way her generation is, she said. "We didn't have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people."

Related Story

Your Smartphone Reduces Your Brainpower, Even If It's Just Sitting There
I've been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena's generation.

Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data-some reaching back to the 1930s-I had never seen anything like it.
The allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less sway over today's teens.
At first I presumed these might be blips, but the trends persisted, across several years and a series of national surveys. The changes weren't just in degree, but in kind. The biggest difference between the Millennials and their predecessors was in how they viewed the world; teens today differ from the Millennials not just in their views but in how they spend their time. The experiences they have every day are radically different from those of the generation that came of age just a few years before them.

What happened in 2012 to cause such dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a starker effect on Millennials trying to find a place in a sputtering economy. But it was exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.

The more I pored over yearly surveys of teen attitudes and behaviors, and the more I talked with young people like Athena, the clearer it became that theirs is a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media. I call them iGen. Born between 1995 and 2012, members of this generation are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the internet. The Millennials grew up with the web as well, but it wasn't ever-present in their lives, at hand at all times, day and night. iGen's oldest members were early adolescents when the iPhone was introduced, in 2007, and high-school students when the iPad entered the scene, in 2010. A 2017 survey of more than 5,000 American teens found that three out of four owned an iPhone.

The advent of the smartphone and its cousin the tablet was followed quickly by hand-wringing about the deleterious effects of "screen time." But the impact of these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns about curtailed attention spans. The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers' lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health. These changes have affected young people in every corner of the nation and in every type of household. The trends appear among teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, suburbs, and small towns. Where there are cell towers, there are teens living their lives on their smartphone.

To those of us who fondly recall a more analog adolescence, this may seem foreign and troubling. The aim of generational study, however, is not to succumb to nostalgia for the way things used to be; it's to understand how they are now. Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, today's teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. They're markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinking's attendant ills.

Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It's not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

Even when a seismic event-a war, a technological leap, a free concert in the mud-plays an outsize role in shaping a group of young people, no single factor ever defines a generation. Parenting styles continue to change, as do school curricula and culture, and these things matter. But the twin rise of the smartphone and social media has caused an earthquake of a magnitude we've not seen in a very long time, if ever. There is compelling evidence that the devices we've placed in young people's hands are having profound effects on their lives-and making them seriously unhappy.

In the early 1970s, the photographer Bill Yates shot a series of portraits at the Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink in Tampa, Florida. In one, a shirtless teen stands with a large bottle of peppermint schnapps stuck in the waistband of his jeans. In another, a boy who looks no older than 12 poses with a cigarette in his mouth. The rink was a place where kids could get away from their parents and inhabit a world of their own, a world where they could drink, smoke, and make out in the backs of their cars. In stark black-and-white, the adolescent Boomers gaze at Yates's camera with the self-confidence born of making your own choices-even if, perhaps especially if, your parents wouldn't think they were the right ones.

Fifteen years later, during my own teenage years as a member of Generation X, smoking had lost some of its romance, but independence was definitely still in. My friends and I plotted to get our driver's license as soon as we could, making DMV appointments for the day we turned 16 and using our newfound freedom to escape the confines of our suburban neighborhood. Asked by our parents, "When will you be home?," we replied, "When do I have to be?"

But the allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less sway over today's teens, who are less likely to leave the house without their parents. The shift is stunning: 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth-graders did as recently as 2009.

Today's teens are also less likely to date. The initial stage of courtship, which Gen Xers called "liking" (as in "Ooh, he likes you!"), kids now call "talking"-an ironic choice for a generation that prefers texting to actual conversation. After two teens have "talked" for a while, they might start dating. But only about 56 percent of high-school seniors in 2015 went out on dates; for Boomers and Gen Xers, the number was about 85 percent.

The decline in dating tracks with a decline in sexual activity. The drop is the sharpest for ninth-graders, among whom the number of sexually active teens has been cut by almost 40 percent since 1991. The average teen now has had sex for the first time by the spring of 11th grade, a full year later than the average Gen Xer. Fewer teens having sex has contributed to what many see as one of the most positive youth trends in recent years: The teen birth rate hit an all-time low in 2016, down 67 percent since its modern peak, in 1991.

Even driving, a symbol of adolescent freedom inscribed in American popular culture, from Rebel Without a Cause to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, has lost its appeal for today's teens. Nearly all Boomer high-school students had their driver's license by the spring of their senior year; more than one in four teens today still lack one at the end of high school. For some, Mom and Dad are such good chauffeurs that there's no urgent need to drive. "My parents drove me everywhere and never complained, so I always had rides," a 21-year-old student in San Diego told me. "I didn't get my license until my mom told me I had to because she could not keep driving me to school." She finally got her license six months after her 18th birthday. In conversation after conversation, teens described getting their license as something to be nagged into by their parents-a notion that would have been unthinkable to previous generations.

Independence isn't free-you need some money in your pocket to pay for gas, or for that bottle of schnapps. In earlier eras, kids worked in great numbers, eager to finance their freedom or prodded by their parents to learn the value of a dollar. But iGen teens aren't working (or managing their own money) as much. In the late 1970s, 77 percent of high-school seniors worked for pay during the school year; by the mid-2010s, only 55 percent did. The number of eighth-graders who work for pay has been cut in half. These declines accelerated during the Great Recession, but teen employment has not bounced back, even though job availability has.

Of course, putting off the responsibilities of adulthood is not an iGen innovation. Gen Xers, in the 1990s, were the first to postpone the traditional markers of adulthood. Young Gen Xers were just about as likely to drive, drink alcohol, and date as young Boomers had been, and more likely to have sex and get pregnant as teens. But as they left their teenage years behind, Gen Xers married and started careers later than their Boomer predecessors had.

Gen X managed to stretch adolescence beyond all previous limits: Its members started becoming adults earlier and finished becoming adults later. Beginning with Millennials and continuing with iGen, adolescence is contracting again-but only because its onset is being delayed. Across a range of behaviors-drinking, dating, spending time unsupervised- 18-year-olds now act more like 15-year-olds used to, and 15-year-olds more like 13-year-olds. Childhood now stretches well into high school.

Why are today's teens waiting longer to take on both the responsibilities and the pleasures of adulthood? Shifts in the economy, and parenting, certainly play a role. In an information economy that rewards higher education more than early work history, parents may be inclined to encourage their kids to stay home and study rather than to get a part-time job. Teens, in turn, seem to be content with this homebody arrangement-not because they're so studious, but because their social life is lived on their phone. They don't need to leave home to spend time with their friends.

If today's teens were a generation of grinds, we'd see that in the data. But eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders in the 2010s actually spend less time on homework than Gen X teens did in the early 1990s. (High-school seniors headed for four-year colleges spend about the same amount of time on homework as their predecessors did.) The time that seniors spend on activities such as student clubs and sports and exercise has changed little in recent years. Combined with the decline in working for pay, this means iGen teens have more leisure time than Gen X teens did, not less.

So what are they doing with all that time? They are on their phone, in their room, alone and often distressed.

Jasu Hu

One of the ironies of iGen life is that despite spending far more time under the same roof as their parents, today's teens can hardly be said to be closer to their mothers and fathers than their predecessors were. "I've seen my friends with their families-they don't talk to them," Athena told me. "They just say 'Okay, okay, whatever' while they're on their phones. They don't pay attention to their family." Like her peers, Athena is an expert at tuning out her parents so she can focus on her phone. She spent much of her summer keeping up with friends, but nearly all of it was over text or Snapchat. "I've been on my phone more than I've been with actual people," she said. "My bed has, like, an imprint of my body."

In this, too, she is typical. The number of teens who get together with their friends nearly every day dropped by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015; the decline has been especially steep recently. It's not only a matter of fewer kids partying; fewer kids are spending time simply hanging out. That's something most teens used to do: nerds and jocks, poor kids and rich kids, C students and A students. The roller rink, the basketball court, the town pool, the local necking spot-they've all been replaced by virtual spaces accessed through apps and the web.

You might expect that teens spend so much time in these new spaces because it makes them happy, but most data suggest that it does not. The Monitoring the Future survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and designed to be nationally representative, has asked 12th-graders more than 1,000 questions every year since 1975 and queried eighth- and 10th-graders since 1991. The survey asks teens how happy they are and also how much of their leisure time they spend on various activities, including nonscreen activities such as in-person social interaction and exercise, and, in recent years, screen activities such as using social media, texting, and browsing the web. The results could not be clearer: Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy.

There's not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness. Eighth-graders who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56 percent more likely to say they're unhappy than those who devote less time to social media. Admittedly, 10 hours a week is a lot. But those who spend six to nine hours a week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they are unhappy than those who use social media even less. The opposite is true of in-person interactions. Those who spend an above-average amount of time with their friends in person are 20 percent less likely to say they're unhappy than those who hang out for a below-average amount of time.

If you were going to give advice for a happy adolescence based on this survey, it would be straightforward: Put down the phone, turn off the laptop, and do something-anything-that does not involve a screen. Of course, these analyses don't unequivocally prove that screen time causes unhappiness; it's possible that unhappy teens spend more time online. But recent research suggests that screen time, in particular social-media use, does indeed cause unhappiness. One study asked college students with a Facebook page to complete short surveys on their phone over the course of two weeks. They'd get a text message with a link five times a day, and report on their mood and how much they'd used Facebook. The more they'd used Facebook, the unhappier they felt, but feeling unhappy did not subsequently lead to more Facebook use.

Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation. Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements "A lot of times I feel lonely," "I often feel left out of things," and "I often wish I had more good friends." Teens' feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since.

This doesn't always mean that, on an individual level, kids who spend more time online are lonelier than kids who spend less time online. Teens who spend more time on social media also spend more time with their friends in person, on average-highly social teens are more social in both venues, and less social teens are less so. But at the generational level, when teens spend more time on smartphones and less time on in-person social interactions, loneliness is more common.

So is depression. Once again, the effect of screen activities is unmistakable: The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression. Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent, while those who play sports, go to religious services, or even do homework more than the average teen cut their risk significantly.

Teens who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have a risk factor for suicide, such as making a suicide plan. (That's much more than the risk related to, say, watching TV.) One piece of data that indirectly but stunningly captures kids' growing isolation, for good and for bad: Since 2007, the homicide rate among teens has declined, but the suicide rate has increased. As teens have started spending less time together, they have become less likely to kill one another, and more likely to kill themselves. In 2011, for the first time in 24 years, the teen suicide rate was higher than the teen homicide rate.

Depression and suicide have many causes; too much technology is clearly not the only one. And the teen suicide rate was even higher in the 1990s, long before smartphones existed. Then again, about four times as many Americans now take antidepressants, which are often effective in treating severe depression, the type most strongly linked to suicide.

What's the connection between smartphones and the apparent psychological distress this generation is experiencing? For all their power to link kids day and night, social media also exacerbate the age-old teen concern about being left out. Today's teens may go to fewer parties and spend less time together in person, but when they do congregate, they document their hangouts relentlessly-on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook. Those not invited to come along are keenly aware of it. Accordingly, the number of teens who feel left out has reached all-time highs across age groups. Like the increase in loneliness, the upswing in feeling left out has been swift and significant.

This trend has been especially steep among girls. Forty-eight percent more girls said they often felt left out in 2015 than in 2010, compared with 27 percent more boys. Girls use social media more often, giving them additional opportunities to feel excluded and lonely when they see their friends or classmates getting together without them. Social media levy a psychic tax on the teen doing the posting as well, as she anxiously awaits the affirmation of comments and likes. When Athena posts pictures to Instagram, she told me, "I'm nervous about what people think and are going to say. It sometimes bugs me when I don't get a certain amount of likes on a picture."

Girls have also borne the brunt of the rise in depressive symptoms among today's teens. Boys' depressive symptoms increased by 21 percent from 2012 to 2015, while girls' increased by 50 percent-more than twice as much. The rise in suicide, too, is more pronounced among girls. Although the rate increased for both sexes, three times as many 12-to-14-year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007, compared with twice as many boys. The suicide rate is still higher for boys, in part because they use more-lethal methods, but girls are beginning to close the gap.

These more dire consequences for teenage girls could also be rooted in the fact that they're more likely to experience cyberbullying. Boys tend to bully one another physically, while girls are more likely to do so by undermining a victim's social status or relationships. Social media give middle- and high-school girls a platform on which to carry out the style of aggression they favor, ostracizing and excluding other girls around the clock.

Social-media companies are of course aware of these problems, and to one degree or another have endeavored to prevent cyberbullying. But their various motivations are, to say the least, complex. A recently leaked Facebook document indicated that the company had been touting to advertisers its ability to determine teens' emotional state based on their on-site behavior, and even to pinpoint "moments when young people need a confidence boost." Facebook acknowledged that the document was real, but denied that it offers "tools to target people based on their emotional state."

In July 2014, a 13-year-old girl in North Texas woke to the smell of something burning. Her phone had overheated and melted into the sheets. National news outlets picked up the story, stoking readers' fears that their cellphone might spontaneously combust. To me, however, the flaming cellphone wasn't the only surprising aspect of the story. Why, I wondered, would anyone sleep with her phone beside her in bed? It's not as though you can surf the web while you're sleeping. And who could slumber deeply inches from a buzzing phone?

Curious, I asked my undergraduate students at San Diego State University what they do with their phone while they sleep. Their answers were a profile in obsession. Nearly all slept with their phone, putting it under their pillow, on the mattress, or at the very least within arm's reach of the bed. They checked social media right before they went to sleep, and reached for their phone as soon as they woke up in the morning (they had to-all of them used it as their alarm clock). Their phone was the last thing they saw before they went to sleep and the first thing they saw when they woke up. If they woke in the middle of the night, they often ended up looking at their phone. Some used the language of addiction. "I know I shouldn't, but I just can't help it," one said about looking at her phone while in bed. Others saw their phone as an extension of their body-or even like a lover: "Having my phone closer to me while I'm sleeping is a comfort."

It may be a comfort, but the smartphone is cutting into teens' sleep: Many now sleep less than seven hours most nights. Sleep experts say that teens should get about nine hours of sleep a night; a teen who is getting less than seven hours a night is significantly sleep deprived. Fifty-seven percent more teens were sleep deprived in 2015 than in 1991. In just the four years from 2012 to 2015, 22 percent more teens failed to get seven hours of sleep.

The increase is suspiciously timed, once again starting around when most teens got a smartphone. Two national surveys show that teens who spend three or more hours a day on electronic devices are 28 percent more likely to get less than seven hours of sleep than those who spend fewer than three hours, and teens who visit social-media sites every day are 19 percent more likely to be sleep deprived. A meta-analysis of studies on electronic-device use among children found similar results: Children who use a media device right before bed are more likely to sleep less than they should, more likely to sleep poorly, and more than twice as likely to be sleepy during the day.

Electronic devices and social media seem to have an especially strong ability to disrupt sleep. Teens who read books and magazines more often than the average are actually slightly less likely to be sleep deprived-either reading lulls them to sleep, or they can put the book down at bedtime. Watching TV for several hours a day is only weakly linked to sleeping less. But the allure of the smartphone is often too much to resist.

Sleep deprivation is linked to myriad issues, including compromised thinking and reasoning, susceptibility to illness, weight gain, and high blood pressure. It also affects mood: People who don't sleep enough are prone to depression and anxiety. Again, it's difficult to trace the precise paths of causation. Smartphones could be causing lack of sleep, which leads to depression, or the phones could be causing depression, which leads to lack of sleep. Or some other factor could be causing both depression and sleep deprivation to rise. But the smartphone, its blue light glowing in the dark, is likely playing a nefarious role.

The correlations between depression and smartphone use are strong enough to suggest that more parents should be telling their kids to put down their phone. As the technology writer Nick Bilton has reported, it's a policy some Silicon Valley executives follow. Even Steve Jobs limited his kids' use of the devices he brought into the world.

What's at stake isn't just how kids experience adolescence. The constant presence of smartphones is likely to affect them well into adulthood. Among people who suffer an episode of depression, at least half become depressed again later in life. Adolescence is a key time for developing social skills; as teens spend less time with their friends face-to-face, they have fewer opportunities to practice them. In the next decade, we may see more adults who know just the right emoji for a situation, but not the right facial expression.

I realize that restricting technology might be an unrealistic demand to impose on a generation of kids so accustomed to being wired at all times. My three daughters were born in 2006, 2009, and 2012. They're not yet old enough to display the traits of iGen teens, but I have already witnessed firsthand just how ingrained new media are in their young lives. I've observed my toddler, barely old enough to walk, confidently swiping her way through an iPad. I've experienced my 6-year-old asking for her own cellphone. I've overheard my 9-year-old discussing the latest app to sweep the fourth grade. Prying the phone out of our kids' hands will be difficult, even more so than the quixotic efforts of my parents' generation to get their kids to turn off MTV and get some fresh air. But more seems to be at stake in urging teens to use their phone responsibly, and there are benefits to be gained even if all we instill in our children is the importance of moderation. Significant effects on both mental health and sleep time appear after two or more hours a day on electronic devices. The average teen spends about two and a half hours a day on electronic devices. Some mild boundary-setting could keep kids from falling into harmful habits.

In my conversations with teens, I saw hopeful signs that kids themselves are beginning to link some of their troubles to their ever-present phone. Athena told me that when she does spend time with her friends in person, they are often looking at their device instead of at her. "I'm trying to talk to them about something, and they don't actually look at my face," she said. "They're looking at their phone, or they're looking at their Apple Watch." "What does that feel like, when you're trying to talk to somebody face-to-face and they're not looking at you?," I asked. "It kind of hurts," she said. "It hurts. I know my parents' generation didn't do that. I could be talking about something super important to me, and they wouldn't even be listening."

Once, she told me, she was hanging out with a friend who was texting her boyfriend. "I was trying to talk to her about my family, and what was going on, and she was like, 'Uh-huh, yeah, whatever.' So I took her phone out of her hands and I threw it at my wall."

I couldn't help laughing. "You play volleyball," I said. "Do you have a pretty good arm?" "Yep," she replied.
This article has been adapted from Jean M. Twenge's forthcoming book, iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy-and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood-and What That Means for the Rest of Us.
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It's a tale as old as time: We see a lot of people wearing/doing/saying something and we want to try it, too. Back in the day it was saying "Bloody Mary" into a mirror at slumber parties. Today, it means viral social media stunts. Though adults get caught up, too, kids are especially susceptible to peer pressure and FOMO (fear of missing out). To them, what was once a double-dog dare is now a popular YouTuber eating a hot pepper just to see what happens.

Called "challenges," these stunts range from harmless to horrifying: There are the silly ones (such as the Mannequin Challenge); the helpful ones (like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge); and the slightly risky ones (such as the Make Your Own Slime Challenge). But sometimes, challenges are downright dangerous, resulting in physical injury -- and possibly even death. So what's a parent to do?

Below are some of the hottest challenges that have swept social media; some fade and then make a comeback. In most cases, kids are watching these challenges on YouTube purely for entertainment, but some challenges inspire kids to try them out themselves. (In fact, the safe ones can be fun for families to try.) Others -- like the Backpack Challenge -- are often done with the goal of filming other kids and broadcasting the results online. While there could be a new one as soon as tomorrow, they do seem to fall into certain categories, and there's some universal advice that parents can follow, no matter the challenge.
Funny Food
Eat It or Wear It Challenge. This one takes some prep: Put some different foods in separate bags and number them. A player chooses a number, checks out the food, and decides to eat it or wear it. If they eat it, they can dump the remainder on another player's head. If they choose to wear it ... you can guess what happens. Other than a huge mess (and food allergies), this one is low-risk.
Physical Frightening
Blue Whale Challenge. Of all these challenges, this one is the scariest and the most mysterious: Over the course of 50 days, an anonymous "administrator" assigns self-harm tasks, like cutting, until the 50th day, when the participant is supposed to commit suicide. It is rumored to have begun in Russia, and there were reports that suicides were tied to the trend, but those are unverified and likely not true. Apps related to the Blue Whale Challenge were said to appear and were then removed. The biggest concern is teens who are at risk and may be susceptible to trends and media about suicide, because even if the challenge began as an isolated incident or hoax, it could become real.
What to Do
Talk about it. Though we can't always be with our tweens and teens to prevent dangerous behavior, our words really can stay with them. Say, "If you ever want to do an internet challenge, check with me first."

Get them to think. Help your kid think through the challenges and whether they're safe or have potential risks. Say, "Walk through each step and figure out where things could go wrong."

Acknowledge peer pressure. Today's kids think of internet personalities as their peers, so seeing kids on YouTube doing a challenge could influence your kid. Say, "Why do you want to do this? Is this a video of yourself that you really want out in the world?"

Stay (somewhat) up to date. Ask your kid about what's happening in their lives when they're not distracted -- even when it seems like they don't want you to. Sometimes kids are more willing to talk about what's going on with other kids than with themselves, so pose questions about friends, school, and trends. Once the conversation is open, you can get a sense of what your kid thinks about the latest craze -- and if they're safe. Keep an open mind and intervene if you're concerned. Say, "Would you consider doing a viral stunt if someone asked you? Which ones would you do and not do?"

Model responsible online habits. Some parents are the ones recording their kids taking these challenges, so make sure your involvement sends the message you intend. Today it might be harmless, but tomorrow it might be more dangerous. Help your kids make the distinction so they can stay safe. Say, "Let's do a funny challenge together, but we'll only film it if you want to, and we'll only share it with family."

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Keeping in touch is no longer about face to face, but instead screen to screen, highlighted by the fact that more than 1 billion people are using Facebook every day.

Social media has become second nature -- but what impact is this having on our brain?

Reward circuitry

In a recent study, researchers at the UCLA brain mapping center used an fMRI scanner to image the brains of 32 teenagers as they used a bespoke social media app resembling Instagram. By watching the activity inside different regions of the brain as the teens used the app, the team found certain regions became activated by "likes", with the brain's reward center becoming especially active.

"When teens learn that their own pictures have supposedly received a lot of likes, they show significantly greater activation in parts of the brain's reward circuitry," says lead author Lauren Sherman. "This is the same group of regions responding when we see pictures of a person we love or when we win money."

The teenagers were shown more than 140 images where 'likes' were believed to from their peers, but were in fact assigned by the research team.

Scans revealed that the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain's reward circuitry, was especially active when teens saw a large number of likes on their own photos, which could inspire them to use social media more often.

Peer influence

As part of the experiment, participants were also shown a range of "neutral" photos showing things like food and friends, and "risky" photos depicting cigarettes and alcohol. But the type of image had no impact on the number of "likes" given by the teens. they were instead more likely to 'like' the more popular photos, regardless of what they showed. This could lead to both a positive and negative influence from peers online.

Sherman believes these results could have important implications among this age group.

"Reward circuitry is thought to be particularly sensitive in adolescence," says Sherman, "It could be explaining, at least in part, why teens are such avid social media users."

Social learning

Adolescence is a period that is very important for social learning, which could explain why teens are often more tuned in to what's going on in their respective cultures. With the rise of social media, Sherman thinks we may even be learning to read likes and shares instead of facial expressions.

"Before, if you were having a face to face interaction everything is qualitative. You use someone's gestures or facial expressions, that sort of thing, to see how effective your message is," she says.

"Now if you go online, one of the ways that you gauge the effectiveness of your message is in the number of likes, favorites or retweets, and this is something that's really different and unique about online interaction."

However, the study may not be applicable to everyone, according to Dr. Iroise Dumontheil,at Birkbeck University.

"[The study] only has adolescents and so they can't really claim anything specific about whether it's adolescents who react to this differently compared to adults."

Changing the brain

Dumontheil does, however, concur that social media is affecting our brain, particularly its plasticity, which is the way the brain grows and changes after experiencing different things.

"Whenever you learn something new or you experience something, it's encoded in your brain, and it's encoded by subtle changes in the strength of connections between neurons," says Dumontheil.

For example, one study showed that the white matter in an adults' brains changed as they learned how to juggle over a period of several months. "They found that if you scan [the brains of] adults before they learn how to juggle, and then three months later, you can see changes in the brain structure," says Dumontheil.

Time spent on social media could, therefore, also cause the brain to change and grow.

"We might be a bit less good at reading subtle expressions on faces that are moving, but we might be much quicker at monitoring what's going on in a whole group of our friends," says Dumontheil.

So are these new skills a good or a bad thing? Neither, she says. "It's just a way we have of adapting to our environment."

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There was a time not too long ago when it was near impossible to walk from my college dorm to my macroeconomics class without having to dodge scores of canvassers for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

It was the early months of 2008, when candidates were going full force and my university campus was amped up with students volunteering to spread messages and recruit more volunteers to propel campaigns.

We all knew Sarah from down the hall loved McCain because she'd easily forgo free pizza in the quad to canvas an extra hour. We knew where Rob stood, after his many texts and Facebook messages pestering us to go into Clinton's campaign office and help make phone calls.

Some of these interactions nearly drove us to insanity, but we at least knew that everyone on campus seemed to have a strong opinion and political discourse was alive and well.

Now, eight years later, I could be living in a parallel universe.

On my digital screens, I have my go-to websites I visit for news. I can't log onto Facebook without seeing someone go on a tangent against Donald Trump. In fact, selfies and cute listicles have taken a back seat as sometimes more than half of my feed is filled with posts, articles, and shocking videos condoning the Billionaire presidential candidate.

Despite months of Trump momentum, seeing countless content from op-eds to well-known comedians bashing him, it's hard for me not to simply think, "we all hate Trump".

Yet another Super Tuesday has come and gone with him sweeping more states.

So, we don't all hate Trump, after all.

Every single one of my contacts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn cannot possibly all hate him either. But someone who's studied this phenomenon has figured out what's happening to me and a lot of my peers who use social media and Internet to get our news.

In his book, " The Filter Bubble," Eli Pariser suggests technology is causing a bubble to form around each of us - preventing us from knowing opposing views, and worse, stopping us from knowing other views may even exists. And this is not just something plaguing Millennials.

Before the internet and iPhones, and before Facebook used more sophisticated algorithms, political discourse took place in coffee shops and in local town papers, citizens could simply skip over an op-ed headline they didn't want to read - but at least they knew it existed.

Now, in an age where my Google search results are different than yours, Facebook is only likely to show content that validates your existing beliefs - because, it wants you to click, like and share.

Rarely am I exposed to the other side without seeking it out, so in my world, the world, hates Trump.

And being in a digital bubble has already caused me to become overly-sensitive when debating those with opposing views, causing me to be slightly aggressive or sometimes just awkward.

Like in the recent late night Uber ride, when my driver Russell, told me, "I just feel like we need a change."

I reminded him that unemployment is now under five percent. We continued to talk as I said the same sentence in multiple variations, until he finally told me, "I don't really care about unemployment."

"What about gas prices!" I shouted.

Getting out of the car, I told him, "While we disagree, I respect your views and our right to engage in this conversation." Of course I meant it. And, I wanted to preserve my 4.8-star customer rating on Uber.

It's not just the Trump-bashing, pro-Hillary content that's in my bubble. Every once in a while, a fellow Millennial's pro-Bernie post creeps its way into my news feed and I find myself itching to un-follow the person or in one case nearly writing, "he's a socialist".

It's hardly the healthy discourse we need in this election and causing us to become more divisive than ever.

I recently received a text from a cousin on my mom's side asking me why a cousin on my dad's side likes Donald Trump. The text continued, "I'm un-following all my friends on Facebook who support him."

I checked Facebook and sure enough there was a paragraph and link in support of Trump from the other cousin. I guess my Facebook algorithm knew me too well to rank it in my feed.

In his book, Pariser urges engineers and designers at major tech companies like Google and Facebook to write code in a way that forces users to be exposed to other thoughts and beliefs that may even challenge their existing opinions. Of course, we'd ideally seek out other opinions ourselves, but it can be hard to even begin when a simple Google search is already tailored to your political views. And I have to think makers of new products would love the chance to use that more inclusive technology in hopes of shaking up existing brand loyalties.

Until we see those changes, what can I do to break out of my online intellectual bubble? I'll start with not 'unfriending' my cousin on Facebook.

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There was a time not too long ago when it was near impossible to walk from my college dorm to my macroeconomics class without having to dodge scores of canvassers for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

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Search for Facebook murder suspect now a "national search," $50,000 reward offered - abcactionnews.com WFTS-TV

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Search for Facebook murder suspect now a "national search," $50,000 reward offered - abcactionnews.com WFTS-TV

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CLEVELAND (AP) - BREAKING UPDATE | The man who randomly gunned down a Cleveland retiree and posted video of the crime on Facebook killed himself Tuesday during a police chase in Pennsylvania that began when a McDonald's employee recognized him at a drive-thru.

It marked a violent end to the nearly 48-hour multistate manhunt for Steve Stephens, whose case brought another round of criticism down on Facebook over how well it polices objectionable material shared by users.

Acting on a tip from the McDonald's, Pennsylvania State Police spotted Stephens leaving the restaurant in Erie and went after him, bumping his car to try to get it to stop, authorities said. He shot himself in the head as the car spun out of control, police said

"This started with one tragedy and ended with another person taking their own life," said Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams. "We would have liked to have brought Steve in peacefully and really talked to him about why this happened."

Stephens, a 37-year-old job counselor who worked with teenagers and young people, was wanted on murder charges in the killing of Robert Godwin Sr., 74, a former foundry worker and father of 10 who was picking up aluminum cans on Sunday when he was shot.

The chilling video was on Facebook for three hours before it was taken down. It was just the latest instance of crime footage being shared on social media.

At a Silicon Valley conference Tuesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg briefly addressed the Cleveland case, saying Facebook has "a lot of work to do" and "we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this."

Police would not speculate on what was behind the killing, but in the video and other footage he posted, Stephens talked about losing everything he had to gambling and having trouble with his girlfriend. He said he "just snapped."

One of Godwin's daughters, Debbie Godwin, said she wished Stephens had been captured.

"I'm not happy he's dead at all, not at all. If you did it, you have to face your crime," she said.

The break in the case came when police received a tip that Stephens was at the McDonald's in Erie, in the northwestern corner of the state, about 100 miles east of Cleveland. He ordered a 20-piece Chicken McNuggets and french fries, according to the manager.

Restaurant owner Thomas DuCharme Jr. told the Erie Times-News that his employees tried to "buy some time for the cops" by telling Stephens his order of fries was delayed. Stephens said he had no time to wait and drove off, DuCharme said.

Police picked up the trail in a chase that lasted 2 miles before Stephens took his own life, authorities said.

Law enforcement officials had said on Monday that Stephens' cellphone was last tracked Sunday afternoon near Erie.

The police chief said Tuesday that it wasn't clear whether Stephens had any help while he was on the run or where he had been and that investigators will try to retrace he steps.

Facebook said it removed the video of the shooting 23 minutes after learning of it. The company has since announced it is launching a review for reporting harmful content.

"This is something that should not have been shared around the world. Period," Cleveland's police chief said.

In the video, Stephens told Godwin the name of his girlfriend and said, "She's the reason that this is about to happen to you." Godwin did not seem to recognize the name.

Investigators said that Godwin was the only victim so far linked to Stephens, despite his claim on Facebook that he killed over a dozen people.

Detectives spoke with the suspect on Sunday by cellphone and tried to persuade him to surrender, police said. Within a day, authorities expanded the search nationwide and offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

________________________________________________

ORIGINAL STORY | In a rambling video, Steve Stephens said, "I snapped, I just snapped." But as the manhunt dragged on Monday for the man accused of posting Facebook footage of himself killing a retiree, police were unable to explain what set him off.

"Only Steve knows that," Cleveland police Chief Calvin Williams said as authorities posted a $50,000 reward for Stephens' capture in the shooting of Robert Godwin Sr., a 74-year-old former foundry worker.

In the video, Stephens blamed a former girlfriend he had lived with, saying he woke up last week and "couldn't take it anymore." But in a statement Monday, the woman shed little light on what might have gone wrong and said Stephens was good to her and her children.

As for the shooting victim, Godwin appeared to have been selected at random, gunned down while picking up aluminum cans Sunday afternoon after spending Easter with some of his children.

A manhunt that started in Cleveland's gritty east side expanded rapidly into a nationwide search for Stephens, a 37-year-old job counselor who worked with teens and young adults, police said.

"He could be nearby. He could be far away or anywhere in between," FBI agent Stephen Anthony said.

Law enforcement officials said his cellphone signal was last detected on Sunday afternoon in Erie, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Cleveland.

Police reported getting dozens and dozens of tips, and nine schools in Philadelphia were locked down Monday while authorities investigated possible sightings of Stephens. But they said there was no sign he was actually there.

Some of those who know Stephens described him as pleasant and kind, while some said he had a gambling problem. He filed for bankruptcy two years ago.

In another video posted to Facebook, Stephens said that he gambled away everything and that he and his girlfriend had planned to marry but didn't, without saying why.

"He got along with everybody, so it's just unbelievable what happened," said Alexis Lee, a friend who saw Stephens last week.

The police chief said: "We are not going to pinpoint a specific thing and say this is what triggered this, because we don't know."

Godwin's daughter said he was killed while collecting cans in a plastic shopping bag.

"Not because he needed the money, it was just something he did," said 52-year-old Debbie Godwin. "That's all he was doing. He wasn't harming anyone."

She said her father, who had 10 children, was a gentle man with nothing mean about him.

Dozens of family, friends and community members gathered Monday evening in Cleveland for a vigil to remember Godwin. They hugged and comforted each other, while urging an end to the violence on their city streets.

READ MORE | Cleveland police looking for man who broadcast fatal Easter shooting on Facebook Family members mourn the death of Facebook shooting victim RELATED: Facebook releases timeline of events in Cleveland shooting

In the shooting video, Stephens told Godwin a woman's name and said, "She's the reason that this is about to happen to you." The victim did not seem to recognize the woman's name. The gunman then pointed a weapon at Godwin, who shielded his face with the plastic bag.

The woman Stephens spoke of, Joy Lane, said in a text to CBS that "we had been in a relationship for several years. I am sorry that all of this has happened." She said Stephens was "a nice guy" who was generous to everyone.

The video of the killing was on Facebook for about three hours before it was taken down.

Investigators said that Godwin was the only victim so far linked to Stephens, despite his claim in a separate video on Facebook that he killed more than a dozen people.

Detectives spoke with Stephens on Sunday by cellphone and tried to persuade him to surrender, police said.

Stephens worked at Beech Brook, a social services agency in suburban Cleveland that deals with vulnerable young people. He helped them gain job skills and find employment, said Beech Brook spokeswoman Nancy Kortemeyer.

An extensive background check before he was hired turned up nothing worrisome, she said.

Stephens filed for bankruptcy in January 2015. His attorney at the time, Trent Binger, said Monday that he remembered Stephens discussing gambling problems.

"He was an easy client to deal with," Binger said. "Always respectful to me ... well-mannered."

If you'd like to help the Godwin family, GoFundMe is working with the following campaign organizer to ensure the funds donated to this account are transferred directly to the family: www.gofundme.com/help-for-cleveland-victim-family.

RELATED: 11 serious crimes that were published on Facebook RELATED: Why suspects stream videos of crimes online

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Search for Facebook murder suspect now a "national search," $50,000 reward offered

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CLEVELAND (AP) - BREAKING UPDATE | The man who randomly gunned down a Cleveland retiree and posted video of the crime on Facebook killed himself Tuesday during a police chase in Pennsylvania that began when a McDonald's employee recognized him at a drive-thru.

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Teens share darker side on Instagram with ‘Finsta’ | WOODTV.com

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Teens share darker side on Instagram with ‘Finsta’ | WOODTV.com

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A journalist makes a video of the Instagram logo using the video feature at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, June 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Katherine Ducharme and 24 Hour News 8 web staff -

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) -- Parents beware: a dangerous social media trend most adults don't know about is making its way across Instagram.

It's called Finsta, which is shorthand for fake Instagram.

Instagram is a smartphone app people use to post photos or videos for their friends to see. However, some teens are taking it a step further by creating a fake or separate account on Instagram, called a "Finsta."

'IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYBODY'

One West Michigan family's life was turned upside down in one day after they found their teenager was caught in a social media nightmare. A few years ago their daughter was using a social media app the parents weren't aware of, called Whisper, to talk to men.

The men turned out to be child predators and detectives reached out to the parents. Next came several court dates and therapy -- their lives changed forever.

"We're a suburban, as normal as a family as you can get and if it can happen to us, it can happen to anybody," said the mother, who wished to remain anonymous.

But social media habits change quickly. Now Finsta accounts are a favorite for some teens.

Chris McKenna, founder of the internet safety group Protect Young Eyes, says while Finsta is "old news to kids" who have had accounts for well over a year, parents still don't know about it.

"If you're a teenager, whether you're 13 or 18, you know that this exists and you're going to have an opportunity to do it," he said.

There are a few ways Finsta creators are using their accounts. With the spam account version, users create a separate account to share a more personal, raw perspective with their inner circle of friends. The second account sometimes includes the word "spam" along with the user's original Instagram account name.

Some people create Finsta accounts to share inappropriate photos. Others use it to become an undercover bully online.

HOW TO SPOT A FINSTA

Parents can identify a Finsta account with just a few taps, if they have their child's login information for Instagram or access to their smartphone and it's already logged into the app.

First, tap the Instagram icon to launch the app. When it opens, parents should see five navigation buttons at the bottom.

"The one that I want to focus on for parents is the settings, sort of your profile over on the side," said McKenna, pointing to the circular icon displaying the user's photo.

Parents should tap on the profile photo, which will pull up the account homepage. If there are two or more accounts associated with that user, you will see an arrow alongside the Instagram user's name on the gray bar at the top of the screen. Click on the arrow and a drop-down menu will show all the accounts.

"You can see that I have two accounts, one that's personal and one that's for Protect Young Eyes and it allows me to toggle between them," said McKenna. "Which is what most kids would choose to do because it's a real pain to log all the way out, put in a new username and password."

The search for a Finsta is more complicated if the user does log in and out. McKenna said the best way to find out is by reviewing who your teen is "following" on Instagram and identify accounts you don't recognize. One of those followers is likely your teen's Finsta, if they have one.

WHAT DO I DO NOW?

For parents who find a Finsta account, McKenna suggests having an open conversation with their child about it.

He also advises parents to check their kids' accounts, but not to snoop. Instead, he suggests reviewing their accounts with them once a week, just to make sure they're using the app for the right reasons.

----

Online: Protect Young Eyes: Defending Kids From Online Danger

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Teens share darker side on Instagram with 'Finsta'

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Katherine Ducharme and 24 Hour News 8 web staff - GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) -- Parents beware: a dangerous social media trend most adults don't know about is making its way across Instagram. It's called Finsta, which is shorthand for fake Instagram.

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Sexually Abused at a Sleepover - Protect Young Eyes Blog

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Sexually Abused at a Sleepover - Protect Young Eyes Blog

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A story of a young boy who was exposed to pornography online and sexually abused at a sleep over.

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Sexually Abused at a Sleepover - 5 Lessons for Parents

Are Sleepovers a Good Idea in the Digital Age?

This is the question I want to explore in this blog post. It might be summer time when you're reading this, which means your kids are spending more time in other places. Sleepovers might happen more frequently.

I remember loving sleepovers while growing up. I was one of those kids who spent a ton of time at other homes (maybe because I had six siblings and needed the break!). On the street where I spent my elementary years, my clan and I rotated between three homes regularly during the summer, enjoying pizza, ice cream, movies, sweets, and late, late nights. Were there risks? Absolutely. We could burn things (and we did). We could share new words (and we did). We could sneakily stay up late and catch an R-rated flick on HBO (and we did).
[Note - if you've been with PYE for a while, this blog post has been updated considerably from a previous version originally published in 2016]
A Real Sleepover Story

I received this Facebook message from a mom:

"Hi Chris - I am reaching out to you because I know that you are very knowledgeable and passionate about protecting children from the dangers of the internet and porn. I am looking for some help/resources to help guide me through a tough situation I am dealing with in regards to my 11 (almost 12) year old son.

Two years ago, my 11-year old became friends with a boy up the street who came from (what I thought) was a very good home. I'd had lots of conversations with the mom as the kids swam and played, she was very involved, this kid had lots of limitations, was well supervised, etc.

One night my son was invited to stay the night. I allowed this. I told the mom my rules on internet, movies, etc. and she was on the same page. This was two years ago.

A few weeks ago my son came to me and ask if he could talk to me. He told me that that night this child showed him porn (and at the time we had not had the talk with my son about porn or sex so he was very confused) and asked him to lick his privates. To my dismay and serious heart break my son played along. Not only that but he waited two years to tell me.

After that overnight, my son chose to never play with this kid again. I thought that was odd so I asked him why but he just said he was mean and didn't like playing with him, so I thought nothing of it.

My son and I have a very open relationship, we talk about a lot and he asks me a lot of questions...he's very comfortable talking to me. It was just too much for him to come to me with this awful thing and confess...it took him nearly two years.

My son has been experiencing A LOT of guilt and shame. I've talked to him for hours upon hours about it, I have not shamed him...I've let him cry on my shoulder, I've prayed over him time and time and time again, I've been a rock for him and a safe place to talk. I've explained that I wish he would have said no and left, called me, or told his mom, but he didn't...and he wished he would have too. I've told him Jesus forgives all sin, that this situation does not define who you are. He said he was afraid to say no.

He doesn't smile, his personality has been altered because of this with guilt and shame he cannot deal with. Honestly over the past year or better I've noticed him withdrawing, not smiling, just not being his normal joyful self. We hurt, we are angry."

This is a hard story to read. It was a difficult situation to work through with a mom who was hurting and broken because she was dealing with unbelievable guilt - thinking that she should have figured it out sooner or could have prevented it in some way.

It's a story that she wanted me to share with as many parents as possible. There are lessons for all of us.

Lesson 1: Digital Doorways are Everywhere

Credit: Photo by Natalia Y on Unsplash
During our parent presentations we remind parents of this reality. And, it's another unfortunate reality that we don't have control over all of the digital doorways.

As it pertains to the sleepover: there are very few productive online activities that happen after 10pm. Should there be a turn-in time for devices? What about shutting off the router at a certain time? What about sitting all the kids down who are sleeping over and explaining your home's rules for using the internet?

Remember this - if there is access to the unfiltered internet at a sleepover, this gives kids access to over a billion websites, of which, anywhere from 10- 20% of them are pornographic. This means 100-200 million pornographic opportunities. To put this in analog terms, back when I was a kid, this would be no different than having multiple, hormonal kids spend the night in a home with 10 rooms, and in one of the rooms there was an orgy happening, and you just hope they don't open the door to the wrong room. It might be a slight exaggeration, but I hope the point is made. The unfiltered Internet, whether accessed through a browser or an app (did you know you can get to porn Twitter in the Bible app, even with Restrictions set?), is rife with pornographic content.

Lesson 2: Peer-on-Peer Sexual Abuse is on the Rise

Sleepovers might provide the perfect environment to carry out certain curiosities based on what they're seen online.
According to a 2017 article from The Guardian:
"Almost 30,000 reports of children sexually assaulting other youngsters, including 2,625 alleged attacks on school premises, have been made to police in the last four years, figures reveal.

The data released by 38 of the 43 forces in England and Wales, in response to freedom of information requests, showed reports of so-called "peer on peer" abuse rose from 4,603 in 2013 to 7,866 last year - an increase of 71%."

A friend of mine who works for a local non-profit agency that assesses and counsels minors who have committed sexual offenses against other minors reported to me that for all cases during the year 2016, all of the offenders had one thing in common - they experienced early exposure to pornography (early = elementary school).

First observed in primates, mirror neurons represent a special class of neurons that activate both when an individual performs an action and also when that same individual observes an action performed by someone else.

According to a 2012 publication in the Journal of Natural Science, Biology and Medicine, Drs. Sourya Acharya and Samarth Shukla state, "In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex, and the inferior parietal cortex."

Therefore, I yawn when someone else yawns. I smile when someone else smiles. And, yes, they likely account for a child's uncanny ability to mimic that which he/she observes with amazing precision.

In other words, a child who sees pornography is likely to have a strong desire to want to try whatever he or she observed. Not because they're bad kids, but because there may be a neurological tug to do so.

As it pertains to the sleepover: wherever there's technology, a responsible adult should be present. And, as a parent who has a child spending the night somewhere else, your knowledge about that family, their digital rules, and the tendencies of their child are abundantly important.

Recently, I received an update from the family who experienced the sexual abuse at the sleepover. Here was mom's response:

"We have just finished discussing the no sleepover rule for our family going forward. With exception of two to three families who we are very close with and share the same morals, values, Internet restrictions, bedtime routines, and most importantly A love for Jesus."

Related Post: 4 Most Dangerous Places for Kids to be Online
Lesson 3: Shame Affects All Ages

This mother was crushed by the reality that her son had carried this dark secret for two years. Shackled by shame, thinking there was something wrong with him, which kept him quiet. He finally buckled under the weight of his secret, but not before a massive amount of emotional trauma was done. Although mom has him in therapy, only time will tell how effectively he will be able to move on from the experience.

As it pertains to the sleepover: be inquisitive about the sleepover experience. Look for anything that might indicate something wrong. Recently, my son spent the night with some relatives. He came home quite upset about something and didn't want to spend the night there again. Immediately, my radar was on high alert for something that might have happened while he was away. It ended up being nothing but me and my wife were gently inquisitive until we discovered the truth.

Lesson 4: Have the Porn Talk Before the Sleepover

Unfortunately, this young man didn't have any tools in his digital tool belt to know what pornography really was, what to do if he saw it, and his parents hadn't provided a clear, open communication door should anything "unusual" ever happen.

This was the line from mom: "...and at the time we had not had the talk with my son about porn or sex so he was very confused."

As it pertains to the sleepover: In the digital age, we believe all 9-year-olds should have at least a minimal understanding of what pornography is, what to do immediately upon seeing it, and that mom and dad are safe to talk to about anything.
Related post: How to Talk to a 5-year-old About Pornography
Lesson 5: Filter/Monitor all Internet Devices

It seems obvious, but we have to keep saying it. The unfiltered internet is not a friendly place for a child (or anyone). We suggest the following three layers of protection for all of the places where kids spend time online. These would be great to discuss with the families and relatives where your kids might spend the night.

Guard the location - where kids use technology often dictates how they use technology. And, don't forget about summer camp or church mission trips - if devices go with kids on those trips (which they often do), then take the right precautions.

Guard the wireless router - remember, you are responsible for every click on every router.

Guard the device - when the iPhone or Android isn't using your WIFI, is it adequately controlled?

Related post: 3 Reasons for Greater Internet Risk During the Summer
As it pertains to the sleepover: The call-to-action below will point you to Resources we recommend for controlling internet-ready devices and for controlling your home's router during that sleepover.

Are sleepovers a good idea in the digital age?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
We think the answer is one of "proceed with caution." The risks are much, much different now 30+ years after my prime sleepover years on Autumn Lane. Remember, parents who are observant, engaged, and informed often have kids who learn to use technology - and navigate sleepovers - well.

Now What? Visit our Resources Page!

Are you ready to have awesome conversations with your kids about how to use their technology well? Do you want access to free videos to watch with your kids about tough, digital topics, including pornography? Would you like to know what parental control solutions we recommend? What about bilingual videos that teach parents about the latest digital trends? All of these are available in our Resources. You can visit them today!

Please follow and like us:

Living life to the full! That's why He died and how I try to live. I have an eclectic list of professional experience...CPA, business advisor, youth pastor, development director, now educational resource manager for Covenant Eyes. God shares wild ideas with me about life while I run. I want to show parents how to protect their kids from online dangers, which led to the creation of Protect Young Eyes. We recently created Virtue in Media, the first digital citizenship curriculum based on Scripture (www.virtueinmedia.com).

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Sexually Abused at a Sleepover - 5 Lessons for Parents - Protect Young Eyes

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Is that sleepover a good idea in the digital age? Using a real story from one of our followers, we provide 5 lessons for parents to consider for their kids.

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An organization dedicated to informing the public about the dangers of social media and protecting our young people.

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Protect Young Eyes explains digital trends, social media, & parental controls. We teach internet safety via webinars, our app, & live talks.

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Our society was unprepared to deal with cyberbullying. It's here and we have no choice but to see it for what it really is.

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This summer, American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, released a special issue on the topic of bullying and victimization. Bullying is, presumably, as old as humanity, but research into it is relatively young: in 1997, when Susan Swearer, one of the issue's two editors, first started studying the problem, she was one of the first researchers in the United States to do so. Back then, only four states had official statutes against bullying behavior, and the only existing longitudinal work had come out of Scandinavia, in the seventies. After Columbine, however, the landscape changed. The popular narrative at the time held that the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had been bullied, and that idea-which has since been challenged -prompted a nationwide conversation about bullying, which researchers around the country began studying in earnest. This special issue marks one of the first attempts to systematically review what we've learned in the last two decades-and, especially, to explore whether and how the Internet has changed the bullying landscape.

In some ways, bullying research has affirmed what we already know. Bullying is the result of an unequal power dynamic-the strong attacking the weak. It can happen in different ways: through physical violence, verbal abuse (in person or online), or the management of relationships (spreading rumors, humiliation, and exclusion). It is usually prolonged (most bullies are repeat offenders) and widespread (a bully targets multiple victims). Longitudinal work shows that bullies and victims can switch places: there is an entire category of bully-victims-people who are victims in one set of circumstances and perpetrators in another. Finally, emerging research demonstrates that bullying follows us throughout life. Workplace and professional bullying is just as common as childhood bullying; often, it's just less obvious. (At work-one hopes-people don't steal your bicycle or give you a wedgie.)

To date, no one has systematically studied how different bullying settings affect bullying behavior-whether bullying in the Northeast differs from bullying the Midwest, or whether bullying in certain cultures, neighborhoods, or professions comes with its own characteristics. What Swearer has noticed, however, in her nearly two decades of bullying research is a persistent-and seemingly fundamental-environmental distinction between urban and rural bullying. In urban and even mid-sized city environments, anonymity is possible. Even if you're bullied in school, you can have a supportive friend group at your local pickup basketball game. And there are multiple schools and multiple neighborhoods, which means you can float from one to the other, leaving bullying behind you in the process.

By contrast, in rural settings, "There aren't options," Swearer said, when we spoke earlier this month. "It's impossible to get away." The next school may be a hundred miles distant, so you are stuck where you are. What's more, everyone knows everyone. The problems of reporting a bully-or, if you are a bully, of becoming less of one-become much more intractable, because your reputation surrounds you, and behavioral patterns are harder to escape. "Your world becomes an isolated and small place," Swearer says. Isolation itself, she points out, can lead to a sense of helplessness and lack of control-feelings that are associated with some of the worst, most persistent psychological problems in any population, including bullying.

In some ways, when it comes to bullying, the Internet has made the world more rural. Before the Internet, bullying ended when you withdrew from whatever environment you were in. But now, the bullying dynamic is harder to contain and harder to ignore. If you're harassed on your Facebook page, all of your social circles know about it; as long as you have access to the network, a ceaseless stream of notifications leaves you vulnerable to victimhood. Bullying may not have become more prevalent-in fact, a recent review of international data suggests that its incidence has declined by as much as ten per cent around the world. But getting away from it has become more difficult.

The inescapability of "cyberbullying" has huge consequences not just for children but also for adults. While workplace bullying is still a new field of study, adults seem to experience bullying just as much as kids do. A 2012 study from the University of Nottingham and the University of Sheffield, in the U.K., found that eight out of ten of the three hundred and twenty adults surveyed across three different universities had been victims of cyberbullying in the last six months; about a quarter reported feeling humiliated or ignored, or being the subject of online gossip, at least once a week. The effects of adult bullying can be just as severe, if not more so, than those of childhood bullying. While students can go to their teachers if they're being bullied, if you report your boss, you could be out of a job. And adult victims of cyberbullying tend to suffer higher levels of mental strain and lower job satisfaction than those subjected to more traditional forms of bullying. An undermining colleague can be put out of mind at the end of the day. But someone who persecutes you over e-mail, social networks, or anonymous comments is far more difficult to avoid and dismiss.

Many forms of adult bullying are uncomfortably close to the sorts of shaming behaviors outlined by Jon Ronson in his recent book, " So You've Been Publicly Shamed." (Alexandra Schwartz wrote about Ronson's book for this web site, earlier this year.) Ronson documents the rise of cyberbrigades which unite in virtual outrage, on Twitter, Reddit, or elsewhere online, to disparage someone's words or behavior. Participants often feel that their abusive actions flow from justified outrage-but all bullies think that their behavior is justified. "We know from moral disengagement work that all bullies feel morally justified in their actions," Swearer pointed out. Ask people why they bully, and they rarely say, "Because I can." They say, "Because I need to." Bullies believe they are teaching someone a lesson; they claim that their victims are, through their own actions or faults, asking for it, and that they need to be called out and corrected. "They say it's retaliatory. 'I just retaliated,' " Swearer said. "They build narratives of their behaviors." Many of the bullies Swearer has dealt with don't seem to have realized that what they did was bullying: they demonstrate "a lack of insight and self-awareness." Instead, they see themselves as righteous crusaders.

In children, it's possible to instill self-awareness about bullying through schoolwide interventions. Catherine Bradshaw, a psychologist and associate dean at the University of Virginia who studies bullying prevention, has found that the most effective approaches are multilayered and include training, behavior-modification guidelines, and systems for detailed data collection. (More, in other words, than a stray assembly or distributed book.) Unfortunately, the equivalent for adults can be hard to find. Many adult bullies hide behind the idea that bullying happens only among children. They conceive of themselves as adults who know better and are offering their hard-earned wisdom to others. The Internet makes that sort of certainty easier to attain: looking at their screens, adult bullies rarely see the impact of their words and actions. Instead, they comfortably bask in self-righteous glory. The U.K. study from 2012 found that online bystanders, too, are disengaged. Observing the actions of cyberbullies, they were less concerned than when they watched in-person bullying.

In short, the picture that's emerged suggests that the Internet has made bullying both harder to escape and harder to identify. It has also, perhaps, made bullies out of some of us who would otherwise not be. We are immersed in an online world in which consequences often go unseen-and that has made it easier to deceive ourselves about what we are doing. The first step to preventing bullying among adults, therefore, might be simple: introspection.

Maria Konnikova writes about psychology and science.
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This summer, American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association, released a special issue on the topic of bullying and victimization. Bullying is, presumably, as old as humanity, but research into it is relatively young: in 1997, when Susan Swearer, one of the issue's two editors, first started studying the problem, she was one of the first researchers in the United States to do so.

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Short film depicts the dangers of sending inappropriate photographs to be be accepted. #dontdoit #sexting #internetsafety

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BSCB E Safety Sub Group - Sexting Secondary Version

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Supported by Trading with Schools and brought to you by BSCB E-Safety Sub Group, this film explores the spiralling effect that 'sexting' can have. A young teenager, Lola forms a relationship with Josh after joining a new school. Through peer pressure and wanting to impress, Lola sends a sexual picture that is shared and sent further than she ever imagined.

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Made for teens to show the damage of 'sexting'. Did you know that sending sexual pictures is a form of child pornography? This is true even if the person sending the photo is the person in the picture. #dontdoit #sexting

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'Exposed'. This 10 minute drama has been designed for 14 to 18 year olds. 'Exposed' deals with the subjects of sexting and cyberbullying, issues that teenagers commonly face.

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Youtube summary: When a group of high-school friends posts an online rumour about a rival, it sparks a chain reaction that leaves no one untouched. Cyberbullying, sexting, filmed fights and police action ensue—will these friends be Tagged forever? The film, character interviews and lesson plans for Tagged are now online at https://esafety.gov.au/

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Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner

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When a group of high-school friends posts an online rumour about a rival, it sparks a chain reaction that leaves no one untouched. Cyberbullying, sexting, filmed fights and police action ensue-will these friends be Tagged forever?

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A young YouTuber takes us inside the reality many teens face daily as they are pressured to make choices without thinking through the consequences.

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READ DESCRIPTION FOR INFO.* INSPIRED BY SUPERMAC18 CyberBullying needs to stop!!! This is not real, it's just an example of cyberbulling. This video shows not to give into peer pressure, and not to cyberbully. Never give into peer pressure, do what YOU think is right!

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Web Trolls, Deindividuation & Interview with a Hater

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Web Trolls, Deindividuation & Interview with a Hater

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Deindividuation causes one to feel anonymous. Trollers have a distorted view of themselves and very little confidence.

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Teenage boys sexually assault a teenage girl and post on social media! The girl is bullied and mocked over social media afterwards. Why on earth would anyone with a heart believe this is acceptable.

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A second teen has been taken into custody in connection with the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl that was recorded on Facebook, police said.

The suspect, a 15-year-old boy, was taken into custody "accompanied by a parent,'' Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in an emailed statement Monday afternoon.

The boy turned himself in at the Ogden District police station while with his mother. He has been charged as a juvenile with criminal sexual assault and manufacturing and distribution of child pornography, Guglielmi said.

"He is being questioned before going to juvenile detention,'' according to Guglielmi.

The news came a day after police announced charges against a 14-year-old boy.

The 14-year-old, who was charged April 1, was expected to face a hearing in juvenile court Monday, but Cook County Associate Judge Patricia Mendoza waived his appearance until April 28. The boy is in custody in a detention center, according to an assistant state's attorney.

Police are also trying to identify others who took part in the assault, officials said, but the investigation has been slowed by the trauma experienced by the girl.

"She's just having such a difficult time even communicating what occurred to her," Cmdr. Brendan Deenihan said at a Sunday news conference at Chicago police headquarters. "We obviously have a video of the incident, so we have verifiable objective evidence of what occurred to this young lady, but she's just having a very difficult time.

Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and Area Central Detective Cmdr. Brendan Deenihan talk with reporters April 2, 2017, about charging the first of several juvenile offenders in a March 19, 2017, criminal sexual assault broadcast on Facebook Live. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and Area Central Detective Cmdr. Brendan Deenihan talk with reporters April 2, 2017, about charging the first of several juvenile offenders in a March 19, 2017, criminal sexual assault broadcast on Facebook Live. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

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"On top of it, there's constant social media ... bullying (of the girl), making fun of what occurred. This is just a very traumatic incident."

The girl had stayed over with family the evening of March 18 and gone to church with them the next day, then was dropped off near home before disappearing.

Deenihan said the girl was "lured" to a residence by one of the attackers, who did not allow her to leave. As many as six males took part in the assault, police have said. She was found two days later walking down the street near her home.

The 14-year-old boy was charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault, manufacture of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography, all of which are felonies, police said.

One of the suspects broadcast the assault on Facebook Live, and authorities have said that as many as 40 people saw it. None called police, an abstention that enraged police Superintendent Eddie Johnson.

"We've seen a couple acts in this city now in the last few months involving social media, and it just disgusts me that people could look at those videos and not pick up the phone and dial 911," he said at the news conference. "It makes you wonder where are we going, what are we doing as a society?"

With her identity obscured, the mother of 15-year-old female sexual assault victim speaks out on March 22, 2017. The assault was captured on Facebook Live video. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

With her identity obscured, the mother of 15-year-old female sexual assault victim speaks out on March 22, 2017. The assault was captured on Facebook Live video. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

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Reginald King, a relative of the girl, said a teen alerted him to the assault on Facebook. Chicago activist Andrew Holmes got the video to police, and the girl's mother was shown screen shots and was able to identify her daughter.

After the girl was found, she was reunited with her mother and taken to a hospital, where she was examined for injuries, a family member later told the Tribune.

As news of the attack spread, people began ringing the family's doorbell and coming around the house in a menacing way, the girl's mother has told the Tribune, and police described a campaign of social media bullying against her. The taunts prompted authorities to relocate her family to another home, which police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi described as "a safe place."

The girl's mother did not return messages seeking comment on the arrest.

Deenihan said that authorities have looked into possible charges against those who watched the video and bullied the girl, but said that making charges stick appears to be a complicated task.

Guglielmi said Facebook has told authorities it's not possible to identify who is watching a video on the platform. And Deenihan said the bullying hasn't risen to the level of criminal conduct.

"We're going to vet all that out to see if there is a specific possible charge, but right now there isn't a specific threat made to the victim or her family, nothing anybody could be charged with," he said.

The attack was at least the fourth Chicago crime caught on Facebook Live since the end of October.

After one of the previous attacks, in which a mentally disabled man was tormented and tortured by a group of people, the company said it does not allow people "to celebrate or glorify crimes" on its network. Facebook took down the video of the girl's assault after being notified by police.

Johnson said that although the girl was having a difficult time talking to investigators about the assault, he was impressed by her courage.

"While I know the emotional wounds caused by this savagery will take long to heal, I am hoping that her story can be an inspiration to other young women who are victimized by bullying and sexual assault," he said.

"The young men responsible, they should be ashamed of themselves. They humiliated themselves, they've humiliated their families, and now they're going to be held accountable for what they did."
Chicago Tribune's Kim Geiger contributed. Twitter @JohnKeilman

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Second suspect in custody after Facebook Live sexual assault

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A second teen has been taken into custody in connection with the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl that was recorded on Facebook, police said. The suspect, a 15-year-old boy, was taken into custody "accompanied by a parent,'' Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in an emailed statement Monday afternoon.

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People often share aspects of their lives online, allowing them to connect to their followers through likes and comments.

Amanda Holmquist sits at her desk in the Letterman Communication Building at Ball State, where she is the assistant director of marketing and communications. She begins her lunchtime routine, pulling out her iPad and bringing up an episode of Gilmore Girls. She reaches for her orange and yellow quilted lunchbox, unzipping it and placing the contents on her desk.

Rather than grabbing a calorie-rich lunch, Amanda does what she calls "desk lunch." She looks down at her tupperware container full of brussels sprouts and chicken breast and feels proud for making a healthy choice. She grabs her phone, holding it up to capture the moment with a triumphant selfie. She posts the picture on Instagram and Facebook, almost immediately receiving likes and encouraging comments from friends and family.

Amanda enjoys posting health and wellness content online alongside her own personal progress, and because of her job in marketing, she has a better idea than the average person about what posts will get the most attention. She also knows that posting at certain times of the day make her content more accessible to more people. The more people who see her fitness posts, the more people there are to hold her accountable to her goals.

According to Ipsos, the third-largest market research company worldwide, every age group shares something online. Whether people share selfies, articles, fitness tips, or important information, they have a reason to post. Getting likes or comments on a post can feel great, but that's not the only reason most people share information online.

According to a study by Scientific Reports, people go through a cognitive process of weighing the pros and cons of sharing information, even if they don't realize it. The brain also examines how posting will make them feel and what they have to gain or lose from sharing. When someone does hit the share button, according to Ipsos, they most likely found that content funny, interesting, or important. By sharing things that are important, people can connect, motivate others, and find support online.
Building Accountability
Sometimes, getting up at 5 a.m., working out, taking care of two kids, studying for a master's degree while working full time, and staying healthy can be a lot to manage for Amanda. But she continues to power through it with the help of social media.

Amanda posts her workouts and meals on Facebook and Instagram almost every day. Her followers have come to expect the posts. When she began a PiYo program (which combines pilates and yoga), several people stopped her in the hallways or reached out online to see what she liked about it and ask how they could get started.

She works hard to continue her progress-not only for herself but to show others they can do it, too. When skipping a workout seems appealing, Amanda thinks of the people who ask her about her programs. Is skipping a workout worth telling them she quit?

No. She'll push through.

A 2001 study published in the Psychology of Sport and Exercise journal revealed that people who regularly see the healthy habits and exercise tendencies of their friends are more likely to have active routines themselves.

Amanda knows people might get tired of her constant posting, but she doesn't care. Posting her progress makes her feel good. If she worked out and ate healthy foods when she didn't want to, she wants people to know about it.

Melinda Messineo, chairperson of the Department of Sociology at Ball State, says this type of posting is common and can help people reach their goals. Trying to see progress in person can be frustrating because improvements are often gradual, making it hard to see a significant change. But looking back at pictures or posts online can show change more dramatically and inspire people to continue.
Creating Connections
Meagan Fisher sat in the vinyl dentist's chair waiting to have her teeth cleaned. The hygienist walked in, and they exchanged polite greetings. Beyond that, she wasn't really sure what to talk about to cure the awkward silence. But before she could come up with something about the weather, or another generic topic, the hygienist began talking about Meagan's recent wedding photographs.

Though the two weren't friends on Facebook, the hygienist had seen the pictures on the wedding photographer's page. If she hadn't mentioned the pictures, Meagan never would have began talking about the wedding or how she and her wife were looking to buy a house. A post on Facebook connected these two people and gave them something to bond over.

Messineo says finding information about strangers on the Internet has become common. While Meagan's experience with this was good, this isn't always the case. Messineo believes the lower standard for privacy in today's culture might be changing the way people communicate.

Meagan often posts to connect with friends, and one way she does that is by encouraging people to meet up at locally owned coffee shops, stores, or bars. According to a survey by Ipsos, 30 percent of all people who share content online do so to support businesses. Meagan does this by updating her status to reflect where she is geographically, a process known commonly as "checking in." This lets her advertise for small businesses downtown. Sometimes she just wants to let people know she's out having fun or send a mass invitation for people to join her.

One night, she was out at the Mark III Tap Room having drinks. She checked in as usual. Within an hour, a co-worker arrived with his girlfriend saying he had seen Meagan's Facebook check-in and wanted to hang out. She hadn't seen him in a while and was definitely surprised, but they had a great time.

"Checking in" isn't always meant as an invite, Messineo says. The feature can also be a way for people to show that they have friends and do fun things. This helps their profiles portray them in a positive way.

Meagan also enjoys posting funny, relatable things to connect with people. She says sometimes you post a selfie that looks great and you know it. Other nights, you post a picture of yourself in pajamas, eating a bowl of cereal at 9 p.m. because that's just life. She enjoys making people laugh, but she sometimes worries they might think the funny side is her whole personality.

Messineo likens the "digital selves" people portray in online profiles to prisms that separate white light. Social media show fractions of our lives. Who we are on Facebook might differ from who we are on Linkedin. Someone's online presence isn't inaccurate, she says, but it is often incomplete-one color in the spectrum. When we treat people according to their digital selves, we don't acknowledge the whole person.

A few years ago, Meagan went out to a local bar called the Fickle Peach with some new co-workers. A man from her office approached her, talking about some of his work that had been published on the front page of the newspaper.

Suddenly, the conversation shifted. The man began to ridicule Meagan, criticizing her appearance until she couldn't take it anymore and left the bar. She says this man was known around town for treating people horribly and was often in trouble with the law. After he was arrested recently, Meagan posted on Facebook about how he had treated her and how happy she was that he was in jail.

Though the man will never see that post, venting about him online felt great for Meagan. The feeling was similar to writing a journal entry or angry letter. Research supports the positive effects of journaling to release emotions, Messineo says, and online posting can act as an extension of that.

Unlike a letter or private entry, Meagan's post resonated with a lot of people. The post received ninety likes and a string of comments from people with similar stories. Even though Meagan had a negative experience, it connected a massive amount of people in a positive way and helped them feel less alone in their experiences.

According to an article published in the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, posting Facebook statuses more frequently throughout the week can lead to decreased feelings of loneliness. Something as simple as liking a picture or commenting on a silly status can help people feel more connected.
Finding Support
Isabel Fernandez usually doesn't put much thought into what she's posting. Like the 71 percent of teens who use multiple social media platforms, according to Pew Research, she normally just scrolls through sites. She likes photos, watches videos, and shares things she finds funny.

There have only been three times when she hesitated to post.

One night, driving around town with her best friend at 11 p.m., Isabel couldn't stand the burden of keeping her bisexuality a secret anymore. It had built up inside her, and the pressure was too much to take.

Isabel's friend convinced her to call her mom and open up right then. Reassured that her mom still loved her and was comfortable with her daughter's bisexuality, Isabel finally found the confidence to come out entirely. She felt ready to post the news on Facebook and received nothing but support.

Isabel also shared about her struggles with sexual assault in a Facebook video. In the video, Isabel holds a bouquet of red, blue, green, and yellow balloons that stand out against the field surrounding her. She releases them in the last frame, watching them float up and away. She felt like releasing the balloons symbolized her moving on.

"When I was raped, I was in a bad place for a very long time," Isabel says. "Letting go and publicly sharing what I had been through and simply knowing that others had been through it, too, helped me feel like I was okay and was going to continue to be okay."

Isabel wanted to help others by sharing her experience, but she didn't expect to receive so much support from friends and other survivors. She posted, in part, because she didn't want to feel alone. When people began messaging her with their own experiences, she realized she was helping prevent them from feeling alone as well.

Sharing traumatic events online can have real benefits, says Messineo. Social media give survivors a platform to reach out and be heard, sharing their stories on their own terms. Posting publicly also relieves them of having the same uncomfortable conversation multiple times.

Isabel recently shared her journey of fighting addiction and staying sober online, posting, "Today marks two weeks of sobriety for me!" The post received 148 likes and several supportive comments from people telling her they were proud. Isabel responded in gratitude.

While the public comments were supportive, however, several people privately messaged her with incorrect assumptions about what she was addicted to.

Messineo says that posting through a recovery journey can show how far the person has come, and make them feel good about their journey, which might be a reason to post. But looking back at negative posts can be detrimental to these efforts, which is why Isabel strives to post positively as much as she can. Even so, posting about these things publicly did make it easier for Isabel to share her story and have everyone know at once.

According to Pew Research, 79 percent of online Americans use Facebook. Seventy-six percent of those users visit the site daily, and 55 percent are on multiple times throughout the day. Posting information online almost guarantees that the people who keep up with Isabel's life will see it.

Messineo says that when an individual shares a personal story on social media, it can help them to take back what happened to them. They can frame and share it in an authentic way, rather than letting people develop their own opinions-which may be skewed.

According to Pew Research Center, 67 percent of Americans use their phones to post pictures, share videos, or comment on things happening around them. Tools like status updates and check-ins have changed the reasons we post and, in turn, created a new sense of community and belonging.

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People often share aspects of their lives online, allowing them to connect to their followers through likes and comments. Amanda Holmquist sits at her desk in the Letterman Communication Building at Ball State, where she is the assistant director of marketing and communications.

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Social media pressures

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Posted on in Child and Adolescent / Developmental Psychology, Health Psychology ,

'Empty', by 'Send me a drift' via Flickr

The growing use of social networking sites also fosters concerns about the negative consequences for adolescents of using these sites. But do adolescents themselves confirm that they are depressed because of Facebook?

Adolescents make a big transition from a focus on parents to a focus on peers. Peers become increasingly important, and forming and maintaining friendships is one of the main challenges in adolescence. Until now most research on social development has focused on in-person interactions. Recently a shift has occurred from real-life social interactions with peers to online social interaction on Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook. The current generation is the first to grow up with SNS as part of their lives. Adolescents are heavy users of SNS: almost 75% of teenagers have a profile on an SNS and over half of them log in on their profile every day. A large part of adolescent social emotional development occurs online. How does teenagers' online behavior relate to offline social behavior? And do adolescents experience negative consequences of SNS use?

A recent study shows that adolescent online behavior is similar to offline behavior. Individuals who display more pro-social behavior online also do this offline ( Wright & Li, 2011). The same accounts for more negative behaviors, such as aggression. According to a national survey of over 1000 American teenagers aged 13-17, there were no differences in self reported well-being between adolescents who are heavy users of SNS and adolescents who are not. Most adolescents indicate that they did not feel that using social networking sites makes a difference in how they feel, for instance regarding their level of self-confidence or their mood. Interestingly, teenagers who do report that social networking sites affect their social emotional well-being mainly report a positive influence. They say it makes them feel less shy and more confident. Furthermore, more than half of the teenagers stated that the use of SNS made them feel more connected to their friends and family. Almost half of the teenagers, however, report that their favorite way of communication with their peers is face-to-face, they say it's more fun and it's easier to understand what others mean.

Although the concerns about a negative impact of social media on teenagers should be taken seriously, it seems that for the most part teenagers experience positive effects of using social media. With the increasing use of SNS, keeping track of the influence of online social interaction on social emotional development in the long run is an interesting avenue for future research.

See also this infographic by Common Sense Media:

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'Facebook depression?' The influence of social media on adolescents

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Posted on in Child and Adolescent / Developmental Psychology, Health Psychology , The growing use of social networking sites also fosters concerns about the negative consequences for adolescents of using these sites. But do adolescents themselves confirm that they are depressed because of Facebook?

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MUST LISTEN: Teen girl flips the script on social media

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MUST LISTEN: Teen girl flips the script on social media

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A girl confronts a bully on an IG anonymous hate page.

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Fact: Most people act differently online than they do in real life.

Whether we're more engaging, less polite or bolder in our political assertions, we tend to present our digital personas differently than we present ourselves in reality.

But why exactly do we feel empowered enough to act a certain way on social networking platforms like Facebook? The site requires users to sign up with their real names, so we're not truly anonymous or far removed from virtual conversation. Even so, our behavior online can be... less than charming.

Professors Keith Wilcox of Columbia University and Andrew T. Stephen of the University of Pittsburgh set out to answer this question in their study titled "Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control," which was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Consumer Research.

In a series of five experiments, the authors illustrate the effects social networking has on individuals. Wilcox and Stephen's main argument states that "people present a positive self-view to others" when online, leading to a increase in self-esteem and decrease in self-control.

"Think of it as a licensing effect: You feel good about yourself so you feel a sense of entitlement," Wilcox told The Wall Street Journal. Essentially, individuals want to protect their "enhanced view" of the world, he states. Hence why occasionally, people post comments on Facebook they would probably never say aloud.

On the flip side, a Utah Valley University study from 2011 found that the longer college students surfed Facebook, the worse they felt about their own lives. So whose research is right? How can self-esteem both rise and plummet via the same social networking platform?

While both studies make different points, the information from Utah found that users who didn't personally know their Facebook "friends" very well believed that " others had better lives," leading to lower self-esteem. In Wilcox and Stephen's study, their main research stems from those Facebook users who are interacting with "strong ties," or close friends. According to their work, these more intimate interactions lead to an elevated self-esteem.

Below we've gathered seven reasons why we act differently online, all taken from Wilcox and Stephen's social networking research. We also highlight the findings from their five experiments on self-esteem and self-control. Check out the slideshow, and then let us know your thoughts: Do you or any of your friends act differently on Facebook? Are you more snarky or less shy online? Tell us in the comments section or tweet us at [@HuffPostTech]. Then flip through the six things easier to resist than social media, or read about why people might think you're a psychopath if you don't have a Facebook account.

BEFORE YOU GO

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Fact: Most people act differently online than they do in real life. Whether we're more engaging, less polite or bolder in our political assertions, we tend to present our digital personas differently than we present ourselves in reality. But why exactly do we feel empowered enough to act a certain way on social networking platforms like Facebook?

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I approach Lorin LaFave's house in Caterham, Surrey, set back and unlit on a long dark road. My fear is that she's behind the door, dreading my arrival. I'm thinking how difficult it will be for her to go over the grooming and murder of her son Breck yet again - and how difficult it must be to talk about Murder Games, a BBC documentary that unpicks each turn of the case, with interviews, analysis and sinister re-enactments.
Very soon, though, Lorin curled up by the fire sipping tea in a silent house, I realise that recounting how her eldest child was lured to his death is no more or less difficult than anything else - getting up each morning, shopping, attending parents' evening with her remaining three children. "It's all equally hard and I kind of dread everything," she says.
"I do these things - I do everything in a robotic way, forcing my body when, really, I'd rather sit and hide and disappear because the pain this has caused is just too deep."

Murder Games is a hard programme to watch, harrowing beyond belief, but probably essential viewing for all teenagers, and teenage boys in particular. To be shown on BBC3, it will come with website links, access to advice and information on internet safety. There has also been a separate screening for teachers and charity workers via BBC Learning and BBC Outreach. "The reason I agreed to the programme is that I can't bear to have lost the most precious thing to me for nothing," says Lorin. "I want everyone to understand the dangers."

Breck Bednar.

Lorin's story starts with a son who, like so many other boys, loved gaming. Breck was born in 1999 - his American parents, Lorin and Barry, had come to the UK two years before for Barry's work as an oil trader. Two years later, their triplets were born - Carly, Chloe and Sebastian, now 14. Though Barry and Lorin separated in 2006, Barry remained close, having the children every other weekend.

"From the start, Breck loved fixing things, taking them apart, putting them together," says Lorin. "At school, Breck wasn't with the footballers, he wasn't competitive. He was in the 'Lego gang' - a little group who made rockets and guns and ran around playing out little fantasies."

Later, computers drew him in. "He dismantled and rebuilt them," says Lorin. "We didn't buy the set-up he had. He was very resourceful, saving birthday and Christmas money, selling and exchanging parts."

Though Breck excelled in school and was an A* student, Lorin describes him as chilled. "He never yelled, swore, slammed the door. He'd come home, get his homework done, his chores out of the way, then go online."

Online, Breck would game. At 14, he was invited into an online gaming group - a 'virtual clubhouse' - by school friends. "Breck's bedroom door was always open and he'd sit, with headphones on," says Lorin. "There was a gaming screen where they might be on a battlefield, a screen with icons for the boys who were online and another screen for live messaging, with images or music or YouTube clips - whatever they were talking about.

"I have to say, I'd rather sit and talk face to face but I could see why they liked it. It was very interactive, social. I could hear everything they were saying - I loved hearing Breck's laugh - and there was nothing very sinister."

Except for one thing - the ringmaster, whose server they played on. While the other members were known to Breck or his friends, Lewis Daynes was not someone they knew in real life.

He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company. Sometimes he was in New York, working for the US government. Other times, he was in Dubai, or off to Syria. "To Breck, who still had his baby teeth and saw no evil in the world, Daynes seemed very cool, very exciting," says Lorin.

When Lorin walked into Breck's room, he'd say, "My mum's come in." While the other boys would go quiet - a mum is enough to silence most teenage boys, Daynes would say, 'Hey, Mum!' and start some banter. When she'd just returned from a dance class, he'd send a dancing lady across the screen.

"I might ask what was going on in New York, and he'd say, 'Not a lot ...'

"I'd ask why he wasn't out with friends on a Friday night and he'd say he was too tired. My fear was that he was some 40-year-old paedophile sitting in his underpants."

As the months passed, Dayne's presence loomed larger. "I'd get a lot of 'Lewis says ...'," Lorin says. "'Lewis says I don't need to finish school as he can get me a Microsoft apprenticeship when I turn 16.' 'Lewis says as I don't drink or smoke and do well in school, I should be allowed to game as long as I want ...'"

It became harder to get Breck offline, to do his homework or his chores. ("Lewis says I shouldn't have to do chores as it's the triplets who make the mess.") When Lorin walked into Breck's room, Daynes now sent images of wicked witches or goose-stepping Hitlers on screen. "I'd be telling Breck to get offline and he'd literally have Dayne's voice in his earphones telling him not to listen. I could see Breck's face, torn between me or his cool mentor who had the whole world going for him."

Lorin believes if it was a daughter enthralled by an online stranger, she would have been taken more seriously. "I worked as a teaching assistant, I asked staff, teachers, other parents and not one person thought it sounded dangerous," she says. "They'd say, 'Oh, that's what boys do.' Or 'My son was a gamer - he grew out of it.'"

Both Lorin and Barry offered to take Breck to meet Daynes. "I wanted him to not show up and prove he wasn't who he claimed to be, but Daynes wouldn't. He was too busy with 'important work'."

In December 2013, Lorin could take no more. "I knew I needed to do something so I did the biggest thing I could and dialled the police on 101. I told the call handler what I'd heard, what I feared. She obviously didn't understand online grooming. She asked if Breck could just play on another website or if I could ask Lewis not to contact my son again. If it was that easy, I'd have done it! I gave her Lewis Dayne's full name and his county - and by the end, I honestly believed he'd be checked in the Police National Computer."

Lorin and Breck.

Had this happened, police would have seen that Lorin had good reason to be afraid. Lewis Daynes had led a troubled life - his parents had divorced, his mother had left the country, he'd spent time in the care of his grandmother and his local authority. Now 18, he was unemployed, living alone in an Essex flat where he bought server space and used it to game with teenage boys. In 2011, he'd been accused of raping a boy and possessing indecent images, though he was not charged.

"In my dream life, the police look him up, then come and tell Breck who Daynes really is," says Lorin.

Instead, she heard nothing. She confiscated Breck's computer equipment and organised a meeting with Barry, Breck, another boy from the gaming group and his parents where they set out their suspicions.

But Daynes was one step ahead. He couriered a phone to Breck so they could communicate and persuaded Breck to record the meeting about him so he knew what was said. "From then on, he knew we were on to him," says Lorin. "It sent everything underground."

Realising that time was running out, police have now established that Daynes began to claim he was ill and dying - too weak to run his company. He'd decided to hand it over to Breck, if Breck could come to his flat in Essex and learn how to take it over.

It's not the grooming we associate with girls and predatory paedophiles, nor the kind we warn our children to watch for. "This wasn't sexting," says Lorin. "Police didn't find a single image or text about bodies or sex. Breck thought their relationship was about technology and computers."

Daynes, meanwhile, was out buying duct tape and condoms.

On Sunday 16 February 2014, Breck took a £100 taxi ride to Daynes's home (Daynes paid). It was the start of half term and he was staying with his father, but told him he was going to his friend Tom's to build a new server. Later, he texted to ask if he could stay the night there.

What happened in Daynes's flat is still unknown. "Unfortunately, you do try to imagine," says Lorin.

"At some point, the tables turned and Breck must have thought, oh my God, my mum was right - and it would have been too late. My heart breaks to think how scared he must have been to be tied up and gagged and stabbed by someone he trusted so much."

Dayne's utterly calm, utterly chilling 999 call on the Monday morning is played on the opening of Murder Games. "My friend and I got into an altercation ... and I'm the only one who came out alive."

Barry and Lorin's life now crossed into the realms of a horror flick. Daynes had cut Breck's throat, photographed his body and sent the image to other members of the gaming group. The news quickly spread between phones to reach Breck's siblings just as police were informing their father.

Daynes later pleaded guilty to murder with sexual and sadistic motivation and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

"It's incomprehensible," says Lorin. "I have to carry on for the other children, but I've aged 100 years. The triplets lost their youth. They went from 12 to teen, from 'yay, happy, poopoo' to 'duct tape, murder, stabbing'. I didn't know Daynes was a murderer but I knew he was dangerous. All I'd done with police, with other parents, with Breck, all the rules I'd had, the talking we did ... it all failed."

Before the funeral, while they were still waiting for Breck's body to be released, Lorin decided to set up the Breck Foundation to raise awareness on internet safety. She speaks at schools, conferences, to parents and police.

"When I was worried about Breck, no one I turned to understood or knew what I should do," she says. "Boys may report this less but I want everyone to understand that they can be groomed and hurt - maybe not murdered but hurt in other ways - by people who are not who they say they are online. I want police to understand what grooming is so that when a parent calls with a name, it will go into the system.

"There's nothing worse than thinking you could have saved your child and didn't. I cannot bear for another family to go through this."
Murder Games: The Life and Death of Breck Bednar is on BBC3 on 26 January, 9pm. Information on the Breck campaign: breckbednar.com

Barry Bednar, Breck's father. Photograph: Grab/Rare Day Ltd

The father's story: Barry Bednar

"I think the programme shows children, parents and teachers how quickly something can change from good to bad. At the beginning, the gaming seemed like fantastic fun - when Breck first showed me I thought it was the coolest thing. And for Breck, it wasn't just the games. He built his own computers, he was into coding, he was passionate about technology. It turned horrible very fast.

Lorin and I were separated but I'd always seen a lot of Breck. We were very close. We talked all the time - even when he was playing that crazy game, he'd always get off when I called. He'd game when he was at my house too. I'd hear Daynes's voice but Daynes never talked to me the way he talked to Lorin, maybe because I'm a man. I was worried, though. I knew his stories were outlandish. No 17-year-old would be running a major consulting firm, working for the US defence. Like Lorin, I thought he might be a paedophile and I told Breck that if he wanted to keeping talking to this guy, I needed to meet him first. I offered to go along with Breck to meet Daynes but that never materialised.

By the December before Breck was murdered, I was worried enough to move back from London to be very close. I had the children for half term and when Breck told me he was going to see a friend, I was happy that he was doing something that wasn't online. Later, when he texted to say he wanted to stay the night, that they'd ordered pizza, I was still happy. We really don't know if Breck sent the text himself or what happened that day or evening. I can only hope that, at first, he did have fun. I've been to Daynes's flat - it's a dump. But perhaps, to a 14-year-old, this place with no parents was great.

There's no word for the impact except devastating. One thing that gets me through is seeing families like the McCanns, or the parents of Milly Dowler who was missing for six months before her body was found. At least we know where Breck is. We know the person who killed him and he's in jail.

As a parent you're supposed to look after your child. We knew there was a problem but still Breck was murdered. If the police had looked Daynes up and told Breck that he wasn't who he claimed to be, that probably would have stopped everything. I believe that if Breck had been a girl, we'd have been taken more seriously."

Online grooming: What you need to know

A new friendship or relationship may not appear to be about sex - there may be no sexual references as the groomer builds the relationship. It might not make your child uncomfortable, so it can be hard to recognise that they are being groomed. Breck enjoyed his relationship with Daynes.

It may take others to spot what is really going on - perhaps another teenager worried that a friend is being controlled. Maybe that teenager confides in a parent. That parent isn't sure whether to intervene. Young people should be on their guard not just for themselves but for other children. Act on concerns by telling a parent or teacher.

If you are worried that a child or young person is being groomed online, report it to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. All reports are reviewed by child protection social workers. The Child sex offender disclosure scheme (Sarah's Law) allows the public to check whether people in contact with their children have a criminal record for child sex offences.

To discuss concerns initially, call the NSPCC Helpline 0800 800 5000

More information: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

This article was amended on 23 January 2016. The title of the BBC documentary was corrected from War Games to Murder Games.

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I couldn't save my child from being killed by an online predator

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Breck Bednar, a 14-year-old boy who loved gaming, was groomed online and murdered in 2014. His mother, Lorin LaFave, was worried - would her pleas for help from police have been taken more seriously if he'd been a girl?

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Alexis: My True Story of Being Seduced by an Online Predator by Alexis Singer is about a very typical teen issue, loneliness. Loneliness can drive us to do things that seem completely irrational even to ourselves and that is just what happened to Alexis. In this mini novel, she had just broken up with her boyfriend, she was a child suffering from a complicated divorce, and to make it worse, she was in her awkward mid-teen years. These type of things can seem like the end of the world at the young age of and in Alexis's case, those things drove her to get involved in the seedier side of the Internet.

After Alexis gives readers a bit of a briefing on her background, she launches into a detailed description of The Board, an online forum of sorts for thespians. The Board was a place she found comforting because despite not having any real friends, she seemed to be making digital ones that enjoyed talking to her about topics she was genuinely interested in. This ended up turning into a bad situation because although the majority of the people she had met on The Board seemed perfectly normal, there was one very sick individual waiting for someone just like Alexis. Phil, as he was known, was in his late 30s and preyed upon confused young women who frequented The Board.

One especially lonely night, Alexis received a message from Phil asking if she was over 18 yet. This should have been a warning sign (even she recognizes that), but she was extremely desperate for some sort of attention and she replied. This was the beginning of a relationship of sorts that would include many inappropriate advances and words that no 16-year-old should ever hear from anyone (let alone a man old enough to be her father).

Throughout the book Alexis is coerced into having cybersex with Phil, taking naked pictures for him and even ends viewing a webcam live feed of Phil's genitals. This may seem like enough to make anyone stop talking to a man like this, but Alexis explains how easily one can be talked into things. Phil was an expert at pushing the limits and then pulling back right when he knew she felt uncomfortable. He used this strategy to feel out how far he could push her and then later ended up getting what he wanted. What began with a simple request for an image of a new piercing became much more. In Alexis's mind the transition didn't seem like a big deal, since Phil made sure to ask for the "favors" in a very calculated manner.

Eventually, Alexis's mother ended up finding out what has transpired and immediately banned her from the Internet. She also tried to find her daughter support groups and hired a detective to see if Phil could be prosecuted for being an Internet predator. In the end they decided not to press charges; the case could have caused more harm to Alexis's life than one would think.

Alexis went to college and started to distance herself from the Internet and from Phil, though she does admit in the end that she still speaks with Phil every so often (though not in a sexual manner). She now has a new boyfriend and is learning the value of social interaction and honest love and friendship.

The book is very easy to read because it is small, the type is large, the chapters are short and without fail, each chapter ends with a little mini cliffhanger that makes you want to keep reading. The average to slower reader will be able to finish this book in less than two hours without breaking a sweat. The topic is interesting and engaging and Alexis is a character that is very relatable. Overall, Alexis represents the everyday girl you meet in high school - though she is sweet and endearing, there is nothing extraordinary about this character. She is simply ordinary, and that makes her real.

I think this book is a good resource for young girls who might be involved in an "innocent" flirtation with an Internet "friend." It is from the point of view of a victim of online sexual abuse and therefore readers can empathize with her. It also does a great job of explaining teen loneliness.

I think that Alexis is a talented young writer and I hope to see more of her work in the future (hopefully about a brighter topic for her sake). As of September 2010 she is only 19, so I think readers can look forward to a wealth of interesting literature from Ms. Singer.

Alexis: My True Story of Being Seduced by an Online Predator
By Alexis Singer
HCI Teens: August 2010
Paperback, 168 pages
$7.95

Alexis: My True Story of Being Seduced by an Online Predator

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Book author: Alexis Singer Reviewed by: Gillian Fournier ~ 3 min read

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Alexis: My True Story of Being Seduced by an Online Predator

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Alexis: My True Story of Being Seduced by an Online Predator by Alexis Singer is about a very typical teen issue, loneliness. Loneliness can drive us to do things that seem completely irrational even to ourselves and that is just what happened to Alexis.

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The dangers of online dating have hit an all time high, tainting the idea of landing a date in the digital age. Even the most innocent of dating sites, such as Christian Mingle, have been used as hunting grounds by online predators. Let's face it. The online dating scene does have honest, genuine, people looking for love. But for every normal person with an online dating profile, there are about 25 psychos you have to filter out.

So how can you safely look for love online? Taking the right precautions and doing a background check is key.

Here are a couple gripping horror stories of online predators that attacked in real life. We hope these stories will shine some much-needed light on the dangers of online dating.

1. Former Navy Lieutenant Uses Christian Mingle To Find Victims

It's hard to believe that former Navy lieutenant, Sean Banks, is an online predator. He could be found prowling multiple dating sites such as Christian Mingle and Match.com. The two unidentified women he met on these sites (K.K and R.O) both claimed to have been raped by Banks.

Banks said that he and K.K. met in person for the first time at her home in La Mesa. Banks claims that he immediately wanted to leave because K.K. had misrepresented herself online, but he stayed so he wouldn't hurt her self-esteem. Somehow she must have changed his mind, because Banks claims they began to kiss and move to the bedroom. K.K. asked Banks to stop, and he did.

K.K's version of the story is very different. First of all, she said Banks introduced himself as "Rylan." So not only is he the one misrepresenting himself, but she also claims he was sexually aggressive throughout the first date and she feared for her life.

Banks admits that he went by the name Rylan because he planned on legally changing his name. Once arrested, he was also accused of raping second victim R.O. in 2009. He now faces charges of forcible rape, rape of an unconscious person, sex with a foreign object, and burglary.

2. Plenty of Fish Predator

This predator, Jeffery Redden, was using the site Plenty of Fish to meet his victims. The unidentified woman said she was looking for love, and the two met and had dinner on Cleveland's west side. After the two hung out for a bit, Redden allegedly sexually assaulted the woman.

The next day it was reported that Redden sent her a text message, and asked her if she was mad about the sexual acts. Well Redden, she was and she had already notified Cleveland's sex crime investigators.

Redden pleaded guilty to abduction and gross sexual imposition, which will land him in prison for the next 18 months. On top of that, when he is out he will have to register as a sex offender.

3. Dating App Danger

Dwan Harden was charged with first degree sexual assault after a woman he met on an app called MocoSpace claimed that he raped her. The victim admits to telling him to, "come over and hang out." She said that the two agreed to meet and "smoke a blunt."

According to news reports, the two went for a ride in Harden's car when the attack happened. In court, the woman testified that she tried to exit the vehicle multiple times, but the door could only be opened from the outside and her window was locked. According to her testimony, Harden then drove her to a parking spot and raped her.

After this experience, the victim had this to say about online dating, "Meet them in person, in the daylight, in a public place and have mace on you, something in case something does go the wrong way."

4. Man Finds Multiple Victims Online

Jonathan Rogers is accused of raping two women at gunpoint in a single month in Birmingham.

The first woman met Rogers through an online classified advertisement, and eventually began to talk to him over the phone. The woman agreed to come over to his house at 3 a.m. (RED FLAG). Once out of the car, she was forced inside at gunpoint and Rogers took her cellphone. Rodgers then raped the woman, only to kick her out of the house after while firing gunshots at her.

Police came to the scene and arrested Rodgers while he tried to escape. When the detective on this case was talking about Rogers, another detective recognized similarities in his own case that he was working on.

This led the Birmingham police to believe that the two incidents were connected to the same perpetrator. In the other case, Rogers is accused of inviting a girl over he had met online and smoking marijuana with her. After, she was raped at gunpoint just like his other alleged victim. It was reported that Rogers then drove the woman to a gas station and abandoned her.

This woman picked Rogers out of a photo lineup. Now Rogers is in court facing two counts of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree robbery, and one count of first-degree sexual abuse.

5. Online Gaming Takes A Dark Turn

Reginald Brent Atkins began the relationship with his alleged victim via an online game. Through the game, he was able to form a close bond and the two eventually began communicating through social media and phone calls for several months.

Atkins decided to fly out and meet the woman. When the two met, it was reported that the woman got drunk and passed out. When she woke up, she realized she had been assaulted, but there was no evidence at the time to arrest Atkins. Later, DNA test resutled backed up the victim's claims that Atkins had sexually abused her. He is now being held on a $25,000 bond.

6. Man Exploits Social Media In Chicago

This victim said she met Maurice Jones on the social media site " Tagged." The two met in the middle of the day and drove Jones' car to Sauk Trail Woods Forest Preserve in Chicago Heights. At this point, Jones allegedly held his victim at gunpoint and raped her.

On the site the man's name was "Maurice Jones," but following a tip the police arrested Karon Godbold at his apartment. Godbold had been using the alias for his online profiles. He is now being charged with one count each of aggravated criminal sexual assault, being an armed habitual criminal, and possession of a weapon by a felon.

7. Never, Ever Meet For The First Time At Your House

A woman had met Robert W. Palen online and exchanged text messages with him for approximately ten days. She eventually agreed to have him come over to her house.

According to Wisconsin State Journal, they ended up kissing, but she attempted to stop him from making any sexual contact. Upset, Palen allegedly began to strangle her and tell her she would die if she screamed. After being punched in the left eye, the woman managed to run away and lock herself in her car.

The woman only knew Palen as "Bob" so when the police came they used social media to find his full identity. Palen is now being charged with second-degree sexual assault, two counts of strangulation and suffocation, battery, and disorderly conduct.

8. Social Media Serial Rapist

South Carolina news site refers to Denzil Jones as a "serial rapist" who met women on social media sites. Jones was another predator that used the site "Tagged." On this site it was reported that he convinced many women to meet him, and three separate times he allegedly raped women that he met on this site.

Jones would allegedly meet all of these girls in the same area, show them his gun, and then sexually assault his victims. He even stole one victim's phone. After allegedly assaulting three women Jones was charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct and armed robbery. He was taken to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in South Carolina.

9. Man Keeps His Online Date As A Slave

Robert E. Whiteside met a 34-year-old woman from Germany on a dating site and paid for her to travel to the United States. When she arrived, he took her money and phone, then held her in sexual servitude, according to police. One day she emailed her estranged husband explaining that she could not leave and she needed money. The husband notified the police and Whiteside was arrested.

The Police Chief Timothy Hayworth was reported saying, "He kept her with him at all times. We believe that he physically assaulted her, sexually assaulted her and never really let her out of his sight."

A search of his house showed hidden bedrooms, guns, ammunition, and pornography. At his first court date, Whiteside referred to all of this as a "misunderstanding." He has been charged with human trafficking and assault by strangulation with more charges to come.

10. Man On Meetme.com Goes Too Far

A woman in Springdale, Arkansas met Alexander Nichols on Meetme.com and the two began to text. One night she invited Nichols over to dinner.

While in the kitchen, Nichols allegedly decided to, "tease her to see how far it would go." It was reported that Nichols began to grope the woman and was pushed away two times, at this point she made up an excuse for him to leave, according to the police report. She notified the police and Nichols now faces a charge of second degree sexual assault.

How Do You Stay Safe?

Although online dating is very dangerous, these are horror stories. We're sharing these with you so that you can better prepare yourself and guard against online predators in your own digital lives.

There are tons of tools to utilize and red flags to look out for when online dating that can keep you out of danger. Spotting sexual predators on online dating sites is possible, if you know the steps you need to take!

How do you protect yourself online? What tips can you share with our readers? Please let us know in the comments!

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10 True Stories Of Online Predators Who Attacked In Real Life

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The dangers of online dating have hit an all time high, tainting the idea of landing a date in the digital age. Even the most innocent of dating sites, such as Christian Mingle, have been used as hunting grounds by online predators. Let's face it.

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On November 10, a 12-year-old girl left her home in the Baltimore suburb of Nottingham at 7:30am, heading to her middle school. She never returned home. When her mother called the school later, she discovered that her daughter had not even arrived. Suddenly, Baltimore County Police were calling in the FBI to assist in their search for a missing person.

According to police reports, "an unfamiliar blue pick-up truck with North Carolina license plates" was spotted by neighbors near Jane Doe's home that morning. (While the girl's name was previously published in Baltimore local media, we'll refer to her by the name used in recent court documents-Jane Doe-because of her age and because of the nature of the crime allegedly committed against her.) Over the next four days, the investigation of Jane Doe's disappearance led to a ranch house on a cul-de-sac 340 miles away in Raleigh, North Carolina. That's where North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement agents working under the direction of the FBI eventually found the kidnapped girl-along with a 32-year-old probationer named Victor Yanez Arroyo.

The girl is now back with her family, but according to arrest documents, Jane Doe told authorities that "at the residence, Arroyo had non-consensual sex with her two times." Arroyo was arrested and now faces a wave of state and federal charges.

Luckily, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies had Doe's real name and several aspects of her digital identity to work with, including her Xbox Live gamer tag, her Apple iCloud account, and her social media chat accounts. All of these digital identities played a role in the forensics work used to track down Jane Doe's abductor.

But they also played a major role in her abduction.

From Kik to Carolina

During his first court hearing, Arroyo told the court through a translator that "I didn't do anything." But authorities claim that Arroyo chatted with Jane Doe in Xbox Live chat and over social media services she accessed from her iPod. (Arroyo, a Mexican national, was already on probation for assaulting a woman in 2007. He is alleged to be in the country illegally.)

According to statements by Baltimore County Police Department officials, Arroyo wasn't the only adult in contact with Jane Doe. The girl had online communications with a number of men in Xbox Live chat and on social media apps. Jane Doe's mother was allegedly aware of these conversations-at least some of them-though she does not appear to be aware of the extent of Jane Doe's online contacts.

On November 14, Microsoft provided transcripts from the last 30 days of Jane Doe's Xbox Live chats to law enforcement. In those transcripts, investigators found this conversation between Doe and someone other than Arroyo. It was from October 17, nearly a month before the abduction:

[Jane Doe] I'm leaving

[Other user] wat do u mean

[Jane Doe] I'm leaving this Friday and I'm going to live with some guy

[Other user] Oh =(

[Jane Doe] I'm running away with him

[Other user] Your just going 2 leave me like that

[Jane Doe] It's for the best babe

[Other user] WAT BEST!!!, y said that u will never leave my side and I will never leave your, now look your leaving me

[Jane Doe] I love you

[Other user] I u do love me y are u leaveing

[Jane Doe] Im not going but babe Im scared he said he was gonna kidnap me

[Other user] ok and but he doesn't know where you live

[Jane Doe] um yea I told him where I live

[Other user] y ?

[Other user] * put arm around u*

[Jane Doe] he know my address

[Other user] did u tell your mom?

[Jane Doe] no because I used kik and I'm not supposed to have it so Id get in big trouble.

The Kik app includes the ability to send photos and Web content to another user. Kik requests a birthday when registering an account, and its rating on the iTunes store warns, "You must be 17 years old to download this app," but the service does not verify those dates or even the validity of the e-mail address used to sign up.

Kik has become quite popular with minors, and anyone who knows a Kik account name can send messages to that user, which has made Kik an apparent hit with pedophiles, according to anecdotes from law enforcement officials across the country and around the world. One self-acknowledged pedophile told New Jersey's The Trentonian that Kik was especially effective for obtaining pornographic images of children, particularly when combined with an app called Hit Me Up, which is no longer available in the US iOS app store. (Ars reached out to Kik for details on what it's able to provide to law enforcement in cases like the Jane Doe abduction, but the company has not responded.)

There were other leads to follow besides the Xbox chat transcripts. Law enforcement officials searched a laptop belonging to the girl's family and found on it a backup for Jane Doe's iPod Touch, which they believed she still had in her possession after the abduction.

Forensic investigators pulled the iPod's serial number, Jane Doe's iCloud account name, and other data from the iPod backup. The serial number and iCloud e-mail address were then provided to Apple to determine if the iPod was still active and to see if it could be traced. Apple confirmed that the device was still in use and began to monitor it.

Apple was able to provide investigators with an IP log history for the iPod from November 11-14. Two different IP addresses showed up in requests from the device. The first was traceable to a network run by the Johnston County Public School System in North Carolina. The second came from a Time Warner Cable customer in Clayton, a Johnston County town, and the subscriber address was just one block away from an elementary school.

Investigation of that address provided a clue that led to another home 21 miles away, where North Carolina ALE agents ultimately found Jane Doe at 10:00pm on November 15. The agents arrested Arroyo and seized two iPhones, a Sprint HTC EVO Android phone, and an iPod from the house.

Arroyo is currently being held in a North Carolina jail, facing federal charges of forcibly transporting a minor across state lines. He has also been hit with North Carolina state charges of kidnapping and rape, for which his bail is set at $1.5 million. The US Immigration Service has slapped a "detainer" order on Arroyo that will place him in Immigration's custody if he is released. And Baltimore County has filed for extradition of Arroyo to prosecute him on Maryland charges.

Fear of the Internet

The case has been broadly reported in Baltimore media, where it has already become a cautionary tale. Child safety experts are wielding it to warn others about the dangers of unsupervised Internet use by children and about the rising tide of "technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation crimes." It's the latest anecdote to be tagged onto a parade of stories about online digital child pornography, "sextortion," and similar network-enabled crimes.

While sex crimes against children overall have been on the decline in recent years, instances of these online predatory situations have risen during the past decade. However, David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, warns that the rise isn't necessarily because the Internet's anonymous dark places make it inherently more dangerous for children.

"It's not clear that the Internet has placed children at greater risk of sexual exploitation," Finkelhor told Ars. "More of crime, and of social life in general, is moving online. But that increase does not necessarily translate to increased risk. In fact, the Internet may increase the likelihood of some of these criminal acts being detected-their messages can be traced."

That certainly ended up being the case with Arroyo, even if it wasn't his messages being traced by law enforcement. Aside from the North Carolina license plate on Arroyo's pickup truck, the most solid lead on Jane Doe's location following the abduction was from her iPod Touch's connection back to Apple's cloud, since the device may have been carried by her abductor.

At this point, it's not clear whether Jane Doe initially went with Arroyo voluntarily. In most cases, according to Finkelhor, a juvenile "goes off in a voluntary way with someone they know is an adult-either because they think they are in love with them or as some sort of an adventure. Usually, the juvenile knows that the person they are talking to is considerably older; they are interested in this and make arrangements to meet them."

In 75 percent of these types of cases, the abuser and the juvenile have multiple meetings prior to the abduction. And about half the time, Finkelhor said, the adult is someone they already know and trust. In such cases, the Internet is just a vector for the sorts of sexual exploitation that happened well before the digital age.

"The scenario that people tend to imagine, based on the newspaper stories and some of the police accounts, is that the danger to children is that they give information to someone acting as another kid and get abducted," Finkelhor said. "Those are extremely rare-we estimate that forcible abduction took place in only five percent of these Internet-related sex crimes."

Finkelhor emphasized that he refers to all such cases as "Internet-facilitated sex crimes." While the term "abduction" is legally applicable, he said, "Abduction tends to emphasize the forcible element of this." But his work has found that a minor often volunteers to engage in sex acts initially but then backs out, sometimes resulting in the predator using force. (Finkelhor stressed that sex between a minor and an adult, even if voluntary, can not be "consensual" under federal law, and thus for purposes of prosecution it makes no difference if the juvenile ever agreed to anything or not.)

Cases like this can feed into a perception in the media and the general public that the Internet is a dark place from which children need to be protected. That attitude can actually make it more difficult to protect children, Finkelhor said.

"It makes people more afraid of the Internet, and it really changes what the prevention implications are," he said. Rather than trying to prevent problems by banning Internet and social media use outright, "we should be telling kids why they shouldn't get into these relationships."

One lesson that might be taken away from tragedies like the Jane Doe abduction is that parents need to do a better job of talking to their children and policing their activities. But Finkelhor noted that might not actually be a realistic solution for the juveniles at greatest risk of getting involved in this kind of online relationship.

"Frequently, the kids who get involved in these [cases] are alienated from their parents," he said. "A lot of the kids in these situations are not having great relationships with their parents."

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12-year-old's online life brings an abductor to her doorstep

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On November 10, a 12-year-old girl left her home in the Baltimore suburb of Nottingham at 7:30am, heading to her middle school. She never returned home. When her mother called the school later, she discovered that her daughter had not even arrived.

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The case of a Massachusetts teenager allegedly kidnapped and sexually abused by a New York couple has drawn new attention to Internet chat rooms, one of which is where the teen met the couple, police say.

In a recent survey of young Internet users aged 10 to 17, one in five reported they had received unwanted sexual solicitations online, ranging from sexually suggestive comments to strangers asking them to meet them in the real world for sex.

Nationwide, 4,500 cases were reported to police last year in which predators used chat rooms to prey on teenagers. But child advocates suspect the actual number is much higher, since most incidents are not reported to the authorities.

A profile of a new kind of sexual predator is emerging: one who is technically savvy, targeting girls between 12 and 15 - especially vulnerable girls who write openly about their problems.

"Small and lost like me" was one message the Massachusetts girl wrote. She said she wanted to run away from home.

"Unfortunately, the predators can smell a child who is vulnerable, it's like chum to a shark," said Parry Aftab, director of Cyberangels, an Internet safety organization, and author of The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace.

You Never Know Who You're Talking to Online

The anonymity of the Internet has allowed predators to easily hide or misrepresent themselves. An online friendship can turn into a dangerous personal meeting.

"Every single case that I'm aware of and the FBI is aware of, the children have gone willingly to a meeting," said Aftab. "It's very easy to get a child to go willingly when you understand how vulnerable they are."

And why do they go?

"They've become their friends and so they feel very comfortable giving out information they would normally not give out to strangers," said Ruben Rodriguez, director of the exploited child unit of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

A 'Friend' Who Asks for Nude Pictures

After a death in the family, Texas teenager Katy Glover found a friend in a chat room. They talked online for a year, chatting almost every day. Katy was 12 when she first met her friend, who said he was 16.

"We kind of like became boyfriend and girlfriend, and eventually, he asked me to take naked pictures of myself," recalled Glover. He sent her a Polaroid camera, and she took some pictures and sent them. When her mother Shari found a letter referring to the pictures, she told the friend to stay away, but did not contact the police.

"I did think about calling the police," said Shari. "The more I thought about it, the more I thought the police wouldn't know what to do. This was so new ... I rationalized that they couldn't do anything."

A year and a half later, Katy and her mother learned from Utah police that the "friend" was actually a middle-aged sexual predator who had been corresponding with a dozen other children as well. The man was eventually arrested and convicted.

Katy is now a "Teenangel," a member of a group of 13-to-17-year-old volunteers trained by Aftab's Cyberangels to teach children, parents and lawmakers about Internet safety issues.

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Get breaking national and world news, broadcast video coverage, and exclusive interviews. Find the top news online at ABC news.

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One of two teenage girls arrested in connection with the bullying death of a Florida girl is expected to remain in jail overnight, while a judge released the other suspect into the custody of her parents.

The two girls were arrested and charged Monday night with felony aggravated stalking in the death of 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick who jumped from a concrete silo tower to her death on Sept. 9.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said today he brought both girls, ages 14 and 12, into custody because he saw a lack of remorse.

He pointed to a Facebook post allegedly written over the weekend by the 14-year-old suspect that said, "'Yes, I bullied Rebecca and she killed herself but I don't give a f---."

"You can add the last word yourself," Judd said.

Cyberbullying: What It Is and What to Do About It

Police said Rebecca was allegedly tormented by as many as 15 girls.

The alleged bullying started in December 2012 when Rebecca and the two suspects were students at Crystal Lake Middle School, according to a statement from the Polk County Sheriff's Office.

Judd said the 14-year-old suspect had started dating a boy Rebecca had been seeing, however the girl "didn't like that and began to harass and ultimately torment Rebecca."

The girl allegedly sent Rebecca menacing messages on Facebook calling her ugly, telling her to "drink bleach and die," and encouraging her to kill herself, police said.

The alleged bullying soon escalated to confrontations at school, including at least one physical attack, according to police.

Police said witnesses, including Rebecca's ex-boyfriend, told them she did not engage her tormentor, leading them to believe she was being bullied.

The 14-year-old suspect also allegedly bullied anyone who was friends with Rebecca, according to police, and even encouraged the 12-year-old suspect, who was Rebecca's friend, to turn on her.

The girl was suspended for one fight in February 2013, according to police, in which the older suspect encouraged her to "beat up" Rebecca.

During a recent interview, police said the girl told them she bullied Rebecca and expressed remorse.

The 12-year-old was released into the custody of her parents and has been placed on home detention pending further proceedings.

Rebecca tried to get a fresh start at a new school for the 2013-14 school year, authorities said, however the torment continued online.

"Rebecca's family is absolutely devastated by this," Judd said. "Quite frankly, we're all devastated by this."

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Teen Charged in Fatal Cyberbullying Case to Remain in Jail

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One of two teenage girls arrested in connection with the bullying death of a Florida girl is expected to remain in jail overnight, while a judge released the other suspect into the custody of her parents.

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teen depression and how social media can help or hurt - cnn

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Teen depression and how social media can help or hurt - CNN

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Cyberbullying and depression are linked, but social media can also create vital connections for some children.

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The Enough Is Enough mission is to make the Internet Safer for Children and Families. Our initiatives include Internet Safety 101, Project Wilberforce, and others.

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So much has been written about the kids these days and their selfies: They're empowering! They're a cry for help! They're creating narcissistic adolescent monsters who don't know how to be respectful at funerals!

In the Ideal to Real TODAY/AOL Body Image survey, teenage girls revealed something unexpected: 65 percent said seeing their selfies on social media actually boosts their confidence. And 40 percent of all teens say social media helps "me present my best face to the world."

The TODAY/AOL findings echo emerging social science on the impact of social media on self-presentation and self-image. Selfies seem inconsequential or goofy, but they can actually be incredibly important to teenagers, because they give teens a way to control the image of themselves that they're showing to the world, experts say.

"It's the first time you get to be the photographer and the subject of the photograph," says Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, who has written extensively about this subject, particularly as it applies to teenagers and/or Millennials. "Even though that seems very simple, that's an extraordinary shift, historically. And control makes people believe in themselves."

Psychologists call it self-efficacy-the idea that you can control your own world, "which is a really big deal for the human brain," Rutledge says.

Selfies are essentially just self-expression, albeit a new(ish) form of it, says danah boyd, a senior Microsoft researcher with a capital letter aversion who has studied the social media habits of teens. She has now compiled her observations into a new book, "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens."

"(P)eople's relationship to selfies are as varied as their relationship to putting on clothes to leave the house," boyd says. "Sometimes, teen girls don clothes that highlight low self-esteem but, often, when teens put on clothes that they like, they make them feel more confident."

And that same idea is true with selfies. "Both clothing and selfies are useful tools for negotiating identity. As a result, you'll find selfies that are really healthy and empowering as well as those that highlight how some youth are in pain," says boyd.
Jordin Sparks: Going without makeup make me more confident
Still, for all that's empowering about selfies, teens - especially young women - naturally have mixed feelings about them. As long as young people are in control of the image, they are confident. But, in the TODAY/AOL body image survey, they acknowledge social media's power to make them feel bad about themselves, especially when confronted with glamorous, mostly happy, pictures of other people's lives.

55 percent of girls and 34 percent of teen boys say "overall, social media makes me feel more self-conscious about my appearance."

58 percent of teen girls say "seeing pictures of other people living glamorous-looking lives on social media makes me feel bad about myself." Only 19 percent of teen boys have the same reaction.

30 percent of all teens say social media means they always need to be "camera-ready."

The key is to not get obsessed with the selfie as a genre, says boyd, "but to appreciate it as a window into teens' lives-including the good, bad, and ugly."

At least 81 percent of teens, ages 12-17, use social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, according to recent findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Instagram, the photo editing and sharing app is especially popular among selfie-loving teenage girls.
Check out the full results of the TODAY/AOL Body Image survey
(You can find more about the methodology of the TODAY/AOL Ideal to Real Body Image Survey here.)
All week, TODAY is exploring the issues we all face with body image on a daily basis, hoping to help you change the way you see yourself. Everyone from Cameron Diaz to Michelle Obama will weigh in. Follow the series at TODAY.com/LoveYourSelfie.
We also want you to get in on the action. Share your selfies on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using the hashtag #LoveYourSelfie or upload them here.

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Selfie-esteem: Teens say selfies give a confidence boost

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So much has been written about the kids these days and their selfies: They're empowering! They're a cry for help! They're creating narcissistic adolescent monsters who don't know how to be respectful at funerals!

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Many parents worry about how exposure to technology might affect toddlers developmentally. We know our preschoolers are picking up new social and cognitive skills at a stunning pace, and we don't want hours spent glued to an iPad to impede that. But adolescence is an equally important period of rapid development, and too few of us are paying attention to how our teenagers' use of technology - much more intense and intimate than a 3-year-old playing with dad's iPhone - is affecting them. In fact, experts worry that the social media and text messages that have become so integral to teenage life are promoting anxiety and lowering self-esteem.

Young people report that there might be good reason to worry. A survey conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health asked 14-24-year-olds in the UK how social media platforms impacted their health and well-being. The survey results found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all led to increased feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image, and loneliness.

Indirect communication

Teens are masters at keeping themselves occupied in the hours after school until way past bedtime. When they're not doing their homework (and when they are) they're online and on their phones, texting, sharing, trolling, scrolling, you name it. Of course before everyone had an Instagram account teens kept themselves busy, too, but they were more likely to do their chatting on the phone, or in person when hanging out at the mall. It may have looked like a lot of aimless hanging around, but what they were doing was experimenting, trying out skills, and succeeding and failing in tons of tiny real-time interactions that kids today are missing out on. For one thing, modern teens are learning to do most of their communication while looking at a screen, not another person.

"As a species we are very highly attuned to reading social cues," says Catherine Steiner-Adair, EdD, a clinical psychologist and author of The Big Disconnect. "There's no question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communicating puts everybody in a context where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are rendered invisible."

Lowering the risks

Certainly speaking indirectly creates a barrier to clear communication, but that's not all. Learning how to make friends is a major part of growing up, and friendship requires a certain amount of risk-taking. This is true for making a new friend, but it's also true for maintaining friendships. When there are problems that need to be faced - big ones or small ones - it takes courage to be honest about your feelings and then hear what the other person has to say. Learning to effectively cross these bridges is part of what makes friendship fun and exciting, and also scary. "Part of healthy self-esteem is knowing how to say what you think and feel even when you're in disagreement with other people or it feels emotionally risky," notes Dr. Steiner-Adair.

But when friendship is conducted online and through texts, kids are doing this in a context stripped of many of the most personal - and sometimes intimidating - aspects of communication. It's easier to keep your guard up when you're texting, so less is at stake. You aren't hearing or seeing the effect that your words are having on the other person. Because the conversation isn't happening in real time, each party can take more time to consider a response. No wonder kids say calling someone on the phone is "too intense"- it requires more direct communication, and if you aren't used to that it may well feel scary.

If kids aren't getting enough practice relating to people and getting their needs met in person and in real time, many of them will grow up to be adults who are anxious about our species' primary means of communication - talking. And of course social negotiations only get riskier as people get older and begin navigating romantic relationships and employment.

Cyberbullying and the imposter syndrome

The other big danger that comes from kids communicating more indirectly is that it has gotten easier to be cruel. "Kids text all sorts of things that you would never in a million years contemplate saying to anyone's face," says Donna Wick, EdD, a clinical and developmental psychologist. She notes that this seems to be especially true of girls, who typically don't like to disagree with each other in "real life."

"You hope to teach them that they can disagree without jeopardizing the relationship, but what social media is teaching them to do is disagree in ways that are more extreme and do jeopardize the relationship. It's exactly what you don't want to have happen," she says.

Dr. Steiner-Adair agrees that girls are particularly at risk. "Girls are socialized more to compare themselves to other people, girls in particular, to develop their identities, so it makes them more vulnerable to the downside of all this." She warns that a lack of solid self-esteem is often to blame. "We forget that relational aggression comes from insecurity and feeling awful about yourself, and wanting to put other people down so you feel better."

Peer acceptance is a big thing for adolescents, and many of them care about their image as much as a politician running for office, and to them it can feel as serious. Add to that the fact that kids today are getting actual polling data on how much people like them or their appearance via things like "likes." It's enough to turn anyone's head. Who wouldn't want to make themselves look cooler if they could? So kids can spend hours pruning their online identities, trying to project an idealized image. Teenage girls sort through hundreds of photos, agonizing over which ones to post online. Boys compete for attention by trying to out-gross one other, pushing the envelope as much as they can in the already disinhibited atmosphere online. Kids gang up on each other.

Adolescents have always been doing this, but with the advent of social media they are faced with more opportunities - and more traps - than ever before. When kids scroll through their feeds and see how great everyone seems, it only adds to the pressure. We're used to worrying about the impractical ideals that photoshopped magazine models give to our kids, but what happens with the kid next door is photoshopped, too? Even more confusing, what about when your own profile doesn't really represent the person that you feel like you are on the inside?

"Adolescence and the early twenties in particular are the years in which you are acutely aware of the contrasts between who you appear to be and who you think you are," says Dr. Wick. "It's similar to the 'imposter syndrome' in psychology. As you get older and acquire more mastery, you begin to realize that you actually are good at some things, and then you feel that gap hopefully narrow. But imagine having your deepest darkest fear be that you aren't as good as you look, and then imagine needing to look that good all the time! It's exhausting."

As Dr. Steiner-Adair explains, "Self-esteem comes from consolidating who you are." The more identities you have, and the more time you spend pretending to be someone you aren't, the harder it's going to be to feel good about yourself.

Stalking (and being ignored)

Another big change that has come with new technology and especially smart phones is that we are never really alone. Kids update their status, share what they're watching, listening to, and reading, and have apps that let their friends know their specific location on a map at all times. Even if a person isn't trying to keep his friends updated, he's still never out of reach of a text message. The result is that kids feel hyperconnected with each other. The conversation never needs to stop, and it feels like there's always something new happening.

"Whatever we think of the 'relationships' maintained and in some cases initiated on social media, kids never get a break from them," notes Dr. Wick. "And that, in and of itself, can produce anxiety. Everyone needs a respite from the demands of intimacy and connection; time alone to regroup, replenish and just chill out. When you don't have that, it's easy to become emotionally depleted, fertile ground for anxiety to breed."

It's also surprisingly easy to feel lonely in the middle of all that hyperconnection. For one thing, kids now know with depressing certainty when they're being ignored. We all have phones and we all respond to things pretty quickly, so when you're waiting for a response that doesn't come, the silence can be deafening. The silent treatment might be a strategic insult or just the unfortunate side effect of an online adolescent relationship that starts out intensely but then fades away.

"In the old days when a boy was going to break up with you, he had to have a conversation with you. Or at least he had to call," says Dr. Wick. "These days he might just disappear from your screen, and you never get to have the 'What did I do?' conversation." Kids are often left imagining the worst about themselves.

But even when the conversation doesn't end, being in a constant state of waiting can still provoke anxiety. We can feel ourselves being put on the back burner, we put others back there, and our very human need to communicate is effectively delegated there, too.

What should parents do?

Both experts interviewed for this article agreed that the best thing parents can do to minimize the risks associated with technology is to curtail their own consumption first. It's up to parents to set a good example of what healthy device usage looks like. Most of us check our phones or our email too much, out of either real interest or nervous habit. Kids should be used to seeing our faces, not our heads bent over a screen. Establish technology-free zones in the house and technology-free hours when no one uses the phone, including mom and dad. "Don't walk in the door after work in the middle of a conversation," Dr. Steiner-Adair advises. "Don't walk in the door after work, say 'hi' quickly, and then 'just check your email.' In the morning, get up a half hour earlier than your kids and check your email then. Give them your full attention until they're out the door. And neither of you should be using phones in the car to or from school because that's an important time to talk."

Not only does limiting the amount of time you spend plugged in to computers provide a healthy counterpoint to the tech-obsessed world, it also strengthens the parent-child bond and makes kids feel more secure. Kids need to know that you are available to help them with their problems, talk about their day, or give them a reality check.

"It is the mini-moments of disconnection, when parents are too focused on their own devices and screens, that dilute the parent-child relationship," Dr. Steiner-Adair warns. And when kids start turning to the internet for help or to process whatever happened during the day, you might not like what happens. "Tech can give your children more information that you can, and it doesn't have your values," notes Dr. Steiner-Adair. "It won't be sensitive to your child's personality, and it won't answer his question in a developmentally appropriate way."

In addition Dr. Wick advises delaying the age of first use as much as possible. "I use the same advice here that I use when talking about kids and alcohol - try to get as far as you can without anything at all." If your child is on a social media platform, Dr. Wick says that you should friend them and monitor their page. But she advises against going through text messages unless there is cause for concern. "If you have a reason to be worried then okay, but it better be a good reason. I see parents who are just plain old spying on their kids. Parents should begin by trusting their children. To not even give your kid the benefit of the doubt is incredibly damaging to the relationship. You have to feel like your parents think you're a good kid."

Offline, the gold standard advice for helping kids build healthy self-esteem is to get them involved in something that they're interested in. It could be sports or music or taking apart computers or volunteering - anything that sparks an interest and gives them confidence. When kids learn to feel good about what they can do instead of how they look and what they own, they're happier and better prepared for success in real life. That most of these activities also involve spending time interacting with peers face-to-face is just the icing on the cake.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does social media affect behavior negatively?

How does social media affect social skills?

How does social media affect teenagers' mental health?

Is social media harmful?

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How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers - Child Mind Institute

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How does social media affect teens? Experts say kids are growing up with more anxiety and less self-esteem due to social media. Read advice for parents from specialists in our article.

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Social networking communities are here to stay. Facebook has over 500 million users, while Twitter has over 200 million. That's not even counting blogs or YouTube video blogs. There's no doubt that students are actively engaged in online communities, but what kind of effects are these sites having and how can parents counteract the bad and bolster the positive?

The Negative

1. Many students rely on the accessibility of information on social media specifically and the web in general to provide answers. That means a reduced focus on learning and retaining information.

2. Students who attempt to multi-task, checking social media sites while studying, show reduced academic performance (http://viralms.com/blog/2011/04/how-social-media-affects-students/). Their ability to concentrate on the task at hand is significantly reduced by the distractions that are brought about by YouTube, stumbleupon, Facebook or Twitter.

3. The more time students spend on social sites, the less time they spend socializing in person. Because of the lack of body signals and other nonverbal cues, like tone and inflection, social networking sites are not an adequate replacement for face-to-face communication. Students who spend a great deal of time on social networking are less able to effectively communicate in person.

4. The popularity of social media, and the speed at which information is published, has created a lax attitude towards proper spelling and grammar. The reduces a student's ability to effectively write without relying on a computer's spell check feature. ( source)

5. The degree to which private information is available online and the anonymity the internet seems to provide has made students forget the need to filter the information they post. Many colleges and potential employers investigate an applicant's social networking profiles before granting acceptance or interviews. Most students don't constantly evaluate the content they're publishing online, which can bring about negative consequences months or years down the road.

The Positive

1. Social networking has increased the rate and quality of collaboration for students. They are better able to communicate meeting times or share information quickly, which can increase productivity and help them learn how to work well in groups.

2. Social networking teaches students skills they'll need to survive in the business world. Being able to create and maintain connections to many people in many industries is an integral part of developing a career or building a business.

3. By spending so much time working with new technologies, students develop more familiarity with computers and other electronic devices. With the increased focus on technology in education and business, this will help students build skills that will aid them throughout their lives.

4. The ease with which a student can customize their profile makes them more aware of basic aspects of design and layout that are not often taught in schools. Building resumes and personal websites, which are increasingly used as online portfolios, benefit greatly from the skills obtained by customizing the layout and designs of social networking profiles.

5. The ease and speed with which users can upload pictures, videos or stories has resulted in a greater amount of sharing of creative works. Being able to get instant feedback from friends and family on their creative outlets helps students refine and develop their artistic abilities and can provide much needed confidence or help them decide what career path they may want to pursue.

What Next?

How can parents mitigate the negative aspects of social media while improving upon the positive results? Moderating their access to social media is one excellent method. Most of the negative aspects can be overcome by reducing the amount of time spent on social network sites. Provide ample time for face-to-face social interaction, like having some family leisure time in which you discuss their studies in a relaxed atmosphere or inviting friends and family over for cookouts.

Paying attention to their academic progress and addressing any issues will go a long way towards keeping the negative aspects of social media from influencing their studies. So, too, will providing fun, face-to-face social interaction with loved ones.

Joseph Baker's business experience in management and technology spans more than 15 years. A leader of development and management teams, he also implemented budget reductions professionally and as an independent contractor. Joseph led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses. He is an advocate for educational reform and a proponent of social media integration.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Would you like to write for Edudemic?

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The 10 Best and Worst Ways Social Media Impacts Education

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Social networking communities are here to stay. Facebook has over 500 million users, while Twitter has over 200 million. That's not even counting blogs or YouTube video blogs. There's no doubt that students are actively engaged in online communities, but what kind of effects are these sites having and how can parents counteract the bad and bolster the positive?

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'Priests Online' - A Register Experts Forum, Part 4

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(RNS) No matter where you live, you can go to church, so to speak, with Christ Fellowship in McKinney, Texas, which is on board with almost every high-tech gambit under heaven.

Find the church by going online -- the 21st-century version of sighting a steeple on the horizon. Beyond their website, Christ Fellowship has a Facebook page to give it a friendly presence in social media.

You can download the worship program by scanning their customized-with-a-cross QR code. The worship services are streamed online from their Internet campus - with live chat running so you can share spiritual insights in real time.

Afterward, says Senior Pastor Bruce Miller, ''someone will ask you, 'How did it go? Did God help you today? How can we help you?' Just like we do when people come to our building in McKinney. We are here to help people find and follow Christ, wherever they are starting out from.''

And wherever they are in the digital world.

Christ Fellowship exemplifies most of the latest ways churches dramatically extend their reach of church beyond any one time or local address. Such congregations signal ''a willingness to meet new challenges,'' said Scott Thumma, of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. He's the author of a study by Faith Communities Today (FACT) of how churches, synagogues and mosques use the Internet and other technology.

FACT's national survey of 11,077 of the nation's 335,000 congregations, released in March, found seven in 10 U.S. congregations had websites, and four in 10 had Facebook pages by 2010, Thumma says.

The use of QR codes -- which allow users to scan a bar code with their cell phone and go directly to a related website -- is too new to be measured yet, Thumma said. He recently began tracking churches that stream their worship -- about 1 percent of congregations, Thumma estimates.

Future surveys may also measure the explosion of digital applications. Christ Fellowship has an app for donating online and another one for swapping goods and services to help others in the community -- 2,100 people at the Texas church campus and God knows how many online.

Believers have always been early adopters of every new form of communication since the first printed book was the Gutenberg Bible. Centuries later, examples abound beyond individual congregations. A sampling:

Pope Benedict XVI's annual World Communications address emphasized the importance of a Christian presence in the digital world. The Vatican has a Web TV channel and had a Twitter campaign during Lent.

Confession: A Roman Catholic App - released for the iPhone a year ago by www.littleiapps.com, a U.S. company - has been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Sacraments can't be done virtually so ''you are not YouTube-ing or e-mailing your confession,'' says Patrick Leinen, a co-founder of the company.

The app is a ''personalized examination of conscience,'' an aid that prompts you through the required pre-confession soul-searching. Then you can bring your notes right in to meet the priest, Leinen said.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, a pioneer in print, radio, television and satellite-broadcast outreach for decades, now employs search-engine algorithms to steer people toward salvation.

Their Internet evangelism project, launched last fall, scours search engines for people who enter phrases such as, ''Does God love me?'' or ''Does God answer prayers?'' The results page includes a paid listing that highlights a website introducing Christ, www.PeaceWithGod.jesus.net.

People who sign on to the sinner's prayer on that page turn up in a real-time scroll of the latest ''decisions'' at

, a page that explains the Internet ministry.

You can sing along with a new tablet hymnal from Church Publishing. In March, the Episcopal Church's publishing house released eHymnals for the iPad and other digital readers.

With the infinite reach of technology, ''people are able to confront God in unique ways even if they are hundreds of miles apart,'' said John Mark Reynolds, director of the honors institute at Biola University, a private evangelical school in La Mirada, Calif. Biola held a conference on blogging two years ago. It updated to a Web-focused conference last year and this summer the conference will zero in on digital technology.

No matter the technology, the overall focus remains the same, Reynolds said: ''How can the Christian church utilize the tools media has given us without being subsumed by them? You don't want delivery to become everything.''

Technology should ultimately be an enhancement, not a replacement, for gathering in person for worship, discussion, debate and service to others, said Drew Goodmanson, CEO of Monk Development, which helps churches use the Internet to fulfill their missions.

Goodmanson appreciates that ''you can have a digital Bible in the palm of your hand or connect with others in prayer any time anywhere,'' yet he cautioned: ''Jesus would not have a Facebook page. He wouldn't be stopping in an Internet cafe to update his status.''
(Cathy Lynn Grossman writes for USA Today.)

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More Churches Turning To High-Tech Outreach

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(RNS) No matter where you live, you can go to church, so to speak, with Christ Fellowship in McKinney, Texas, which is on board with almost every high-tech gambit under heaven. Find the church by going online -- the 21st-century version of sighting a steeple on the horizon.

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I've been praying and thinking about how to best use SnapChat and Instagram as tools for teenagers to share their faith. I know there are some bad connotations for ShapChat (and Instagram for that matter) in many circles, but God has a way of redeeming technology to advance His mission and message.

So my question is how?

How can we use these tools to enable teenagers to share the gospel with their peers? My sense from culture reading (and talking to my son and his friends) is that teenagers don't text anymore...they SnapChat. And we all know that many teens use Instagram as well as many other social media platforms to engage their friends.

So how do we redeem these kinds of technologies and use them to get teenagers to begin a gospel conversation with their peers?

I'm looking for real life, practical suggestions here. Remember that I'm, for the most part, a social media ignoramus. Aside from Twitter and Facebook, I'm relatively clueless when it comes to tapping into the potential of these powerful tools. So you'll have to explain your idea well and use small words.

And, please no lecturing on the evils of SnapChat. This post is about redeeming technology, not reaming it. Again, the question I'm looking for help with is this: How can these social media outlets be used to spark Gospel conversations among teenagers?

Your ideas are GREATLY appreciated!!!

Who knows, you may see your idea used at Dare 2 Share or Dare 2 Share Live!

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How can teens use SnapChat, Instagram and other social media platforms as peer-to-peer evangelism tools?

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I've been praying and thinking about how to best use SnapChat and Instagram as tools for teenagers to share their faith. I know there are some bad connotations for ShapChat (and Instagram for that matter) in many circles, but God has a way of redeeming technology to advance His mission and message.

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For months, Alex had been growing closer to a new group of friends online - the kindest she had ever had - who were teaching her what it meant to be a Muslim.

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CHICAGO-While the American military is bombing ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria, there's another conflict raging with the extremist group: over the Twitter feeds of thousands of Muslim teenagers.

ISIS has proved adept at using social media to spread propaganda and attract young people. We've seen headline after headline about youth in the U.S. and around the world-both Muslim and non-Muslim-being recruited to extremist groups on social media.

The Obama administration has committed to fighting back digitally against the ideology of ISIS and its ilk. "We need to find new ways to amplify the voices of peace and tolerance and inclusion, and we especially need to do it online," President Obama said in February.

But so far, there's little doubt that ISIS is winning on the social media front. And some Muslims worry that there's a fine line between the U.S. government helping kids avoid extremism and arresting them for falling prey to it.

Creating counter-narratives on social media is a powerful strategy to fighting extremist recruiting, said Farah Pandith, who was the first Special Representative to Muslim Communities at the U.S. State Department. Now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, she's traveled around the world meeting young Muslims and studying how ISIS and other terrorist groups are recruiting them.

"Extremist ideology is going viral," Pandith said in a speech at Chicago Ideas Week on Wednesday. "We need to approach the ideological war with the appropriate resources and respect as we do the physical war, devoting ourselves to a strategy of hard and soft power."

Most teens are recruited through "patient one-on-one coaxing" by ISIS supporters around the world, she said. Extremist recruiters find young people looking to understand Islam and then form online relationships with them.

Some Muslim young people in western countries are vulnerable to this kind of recruitment because they're going through a kind of identity crisis about their religion, Pandith said. Muslim kids grow up seeing an onslaught of headlines, TV shows and movies portraying people who share their faith as terrorists. Being a teenager sucks for everyone, but especially so if you and your family are discriminated against every day. Many kids are left wondering what their religion means.

For alienated young Muslims, extremism "fills the void by becoming a lifestyle brand with the same cultural significance of brands like Apple or Nike," Pandith said. "Islam is punk rock, the headscarf is liberating, and beards are sexy."

Pandith said the U.S. government and nonprofits should do more to support local, grassroots efforts by Muslims around the world to send a different message of what Islam is. They might help amplify the voices of a Pakistani comic artist creating web comics encouraging young Muslims to think critically about Islamic ideology. Or Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago who created a WhatsApp account that young people can reach out to anonymously with questions about their faith and identity. Or British Muslims who started a hashtag campaign telling people that what ISIS does is #NotInMyName.

So far, though, efforts like these can't stand up to ISIS supporters, who have created tens of thousands of social media accounts. One example of a positive social media effort Pandith cited in her speech was a group called Muslim Frank Talk, a Facebook page designed to help young Muslims in South Africa talk about identity and religion. She didn't mention that it has only 11 likes and a single post from 2013.

The State Department runs a Twitter account that tweets at ISIS supporters and encourages them to "turn away" from extremism. But in many cases, it has ended up getting into disputes with ISIS-sympathetic accounts about whether extremists or the U.S. have killed more people. "This outreach by the U.S. government is not only ineffective, but also provides jihadists with a stage to voice their arguments," Rita Katz, an analyst who studies online extremists, wrote in Time. The account is "embarrassing," she said.

Pandith said grassroots actions would be more successful. "I'm not talking about engaging in a war on Twitter," she said. "We must drown out the voices of extremists by supporting positive new concepts, causes, and charismatic leaders in which the youth can believe."

Many Muslim leaders, however, worry that the government efforts to combat extremism might be yet another post-9/11 attempt at surveilling and profiling Muslim communities. "For the government to offer us services based on concerns of violent extremism in our community...seems to reinforce the same stereotype that society holds of American-Muslims: that they or Islam are inherently violent," Yusufi Vali, the executive director of Boston's biggest mosque, wrote in a letter to the Obama administration earlier this year.

And even as Obama and Pandith talk about empowering young Muslims, the federal government is arresting young people who fall prey to ISIS recruiters. Ali Amin, a 17-year-old in Virginia, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in August for tweeting in support of ISIS and helping a friend travel to Syria to join the group.

More than 60 people like Amin-many in their late teens or early twenties-have been arrested and charged with supporting ISIS since last year. About 80% of those people were recruited by social media, according to prosecutors.

"Extremist ideology must be treated like a virus that infects individuals and spreads to entire communities, shattering lives and destroying families," Pandith said. "We must look at this the way we would look at any other pandemic diseases."
Univision, one of Fusion's parent companies, is one of the sponsors of Chicago Ideas Week. Sujay Kumar contributed reporting. Casey Tolan is a National News Reporter for Fusion based in New York City.

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How the fight against ISIS is being waged over teenagers' social media accounts

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CHICAGO-While the American military is bombing ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria, there's another conflict raging with the extremist group: over the Twitter feeds of thousands of Muslim teenagers. ISIS has proved adept at using social media to spread propaganda and attract young people. We've seen headline after headline about youth in the U.S.

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Social media and dating apps are putting unprecedented pressures on America's teen girls, author Nancy Jo Sales says. Her new book, American Girls, opens with a story about one 13-year-old who received an Instagram request for "noodz" [nude photos] from a boy she didn't know very well.

"When I was a girl and the things that would come up in your life that were difficult or troubling or whatever - there was always a Judy Blume book for it," Sales tells Fresh Air' s Terry Gross. But, Sales says, when it comes to responding to an out-of-the-blue solicitation for naked images, "there's no Judy Blume book for that. There's nothing for them to turn to, to know, like, 'How do I react to this?' "

In the 2 1/2 years she spent researching her book, Sales interviewed more than 200 teenage girls around the country about their social media and Internet usage. She says girls face enormous pressures to post "hot" or sexualized photos of themselves online, and she adds that this pressure can make the Internet an unwelcoming environment.

"I think a lot of people are not aware of how the atmosphere has really changed in social situations ... in terms of how the girls are treated and how the boys behave," Sales says. "This is a kind of sexism and misogyny being played out in real time in this really extreme way."

Interview Highlights
On how males' and females' pictures differ on Tinder
I talked to an 18-year-old girl who is talking about looking at Tinder with her older brother and ... she said she was struck by the way in which the boys and men's pictures were very different than the girls'. Guys tend to have a picture like, I don't know, they're standing on a mountain looking like they've climbed the mountain, or they're holding a big fish or they're doing something manly, or in their car. ... But the girls' pictures ... tend to be very different; they tend to be a lot more sexualized.
On boys asking girls for nude photos
This is a pressure on social media that goes back, for women and girls, a long time. ... I trace the origins back to a site called "Hot or Not" which came out in 2000. ... The whole idea of "hotness" has become such a factor in the lives of American girls, unfortunately, because according to many, many studies, including a really landmark report by the American Psychological Association in 2007, this has wide-ranging ramifications for girls' health and well-being, including studies that link this pressure to sexualize on all kinds of things like rising anxiety, depression, cutting, eating disorders. It's a thing that I don't think that boys have to deal with as much.

I think the fact that so often we're talking about nudes and sexting is because kids are watching porn. There's multiple studies that say that they are. We know that they are. They're curious. They're going through puberty. They're watching porn. And yet, nobody really talks about it or talks about the fact that it has an effect on how they behave and what they think about sex and sexuality and how they deal with each other. And there's really no guidelines for girls about how to react to all of this. ...

Some 13-year-old girls in Florida and New Jersey both told me that if they didn't [send photos] they had been threatened with boys sending rumors about them, sending around a picture that actually wasn't them and saying it was them. I mean, there's a kind of thing in adult life that we know about called revenge porn, and that happens among kids as well, unfortunately.

It's very risky for girls to send nudes because when they do, if they chose to, those photos are not private. They can be shared and very often they are shared. I heard story after story of situations where girls had pictures of themselves sent around to groups of people. It has become such a normal thing to them.

A "slut page" is when someone, typically a boy, not 100 percent of the time, but mostly a boy or boys, will collect nude photos of girls in their school or in the area's schools and post them on a page. I've seen them on Facebook or Instagram. It looks like an amateur pornography site - it is an amateur pornography site, I would say - and it's underage girls and pictures that are sent to someone, very often that they think won't share them but who does. It's a nonconsensual sharing of these pictures, and sometimes without their knowledge.
On how porn is affecting sex
I've talked to girls who found out about it through text. Suddenly their phone blows up and they find out, "Oh my god, you're on this page." I think it's very threatening because it's abuse of a certain kind and it's harassment, and it's very often not punished in any way, or even known by adults.

It was through talking to girls that I started thinking about porn, and they really enlightened me about the effect that porn was having on their lives, because they would start describing to me interactions that they had with boys. For example, "Send me nudes," or a boy sending a nude picture of himself. ... These things that they're describing sound violent to me. They say, "[Boys] expect this, and they expect that, and they want you to do this, and they want you to do that." And these things, they're all the hallmarks of the most popular online porn.

There's different things that are sort of popularized in porn. Pornographers have found that they get more traffic, more clicks, more views, whatever, the more extreme that it is. That seems to be the trend that has happened in porn in the last decade or so, right? So there are certain acts or moves or behaviors, whatever, which are filtering their way into the sexual encounters of teenage girls and boys.

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Teen Girls And Social Media: A Story Of 'Secret Lives' And Misogyny

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Social media and dating apps are putting unprecedented pressures on America's teen girls, author Nancy Jo Sales says. Her new book, American Girls, opens with a story about one 13-year-old who received an Instagram request for "noodz" [nude photos] from a boy she didn't know very well.

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Growing up is tough for anyone, but it's even harder for kids today who grow up navigating puberty and relationships through a screen. That's what journalist, author and mom Nancy Jo Sales argues in her new book, "American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers."

Through 2½ years of research and more than 200 interviews with teenagers, Sales shows how complicated it is to be a girl growing up with a smartphone and the ripple effect social media can have on the rest of their lives.

The Deseret News talked with Sales about how social media is changing the lives of teens and, by extension, the future of America.

Deseret News: Your first book, "The Bling Ring" was an account of a group of teens who used technology to help them sneak into celebrity homes and steal $3 million worth of stuff. Is there something about how teens use technology that especially interests you?

Nancy Jo Sales: I'm interested in the idea of fame because kids are so interested in it. I don't remember when I was a girl having the same emphasis on fame. I never ever heard anyone say, "I want to be famous." And that's what I started to hear from young people in the '90s. I wrote a story (published in New York Magazine in 1996) called "Prep-School Gangsters," about rich kids and poor kids in NYC and this mash-up of cultures sharing a lot of things including love of hip hop music. They all wanted to be famous and they all did graffiti as a way to get fame. One of the girls in the midst of these kids (I was writing about) was Paris Hilton.

That was kind of the beginning of what we're seeing now, where young kids are becoming interested in becoming famous and rich just for its own sake. They're just kids reflecting the culture and those are the values they're reflecting. But what's significant about this now is that kids especially have in their hands the means to become a new kind of famous.

You don't have to have anything like what we think of as talent. You have to be good at using tech, knowing when to post and understand self-promotion. That's why, in this book, I look at the Kardashians. Their fame comes from their skill at using social media to promote themselves and reflecting these values of wealth, materialism, consumption of luxury goods and sexualization of the female body. And you have to ask yourself, why are these people famous? And it's because they've learned to use social media to draw attention to themselves.

DN: What led you to look into how social media use impacts teen girls specifically?

NJS: The girls (interviewed for the book) really brought me to the subject from the very first interview I did for Vanity Fair about girls and what it means to grow up a girl in America. At the time, there were a lot of things on the news involving rape - Steubenville had just happened (in which two Ohio high school football players were convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl and distributing photos of the incident via social media). The girls really brought me to this subject, they set the tone for the entire thing. One girl told me, "(Social media) is destroying our lives." That's the snare they feel they're in. The natural reaction is, why not move off social media? But that's where they're socializing, that's where they're living and their friendships happen. To be part of the conversation that's constantly going on, you have to be on it, but it's not all the positive exchanges and happy friendships many social media companies would have us believe.

DN: The chapters in your book are numbered 13 through 19, for the ages of the girls you interview in those chapters. What differences did you notice between those ages as you studied their interaction with social media?

NJS: Some of the older girls, like 16, would say to me, "I can't believe what 13-year-olds are doing online," commenting about how younger girls are more extreme in their behavior. They were struck by how the younger girls were using social media even more and how much more sexualized it was, how much emphasis was placed on appearance. Some of the 16-year-olds would reflect on how the 12-year-olds were wearing makeup and they thought social media was putting this extreme emphasis on appearance for younger girls.

DN: Of everything you learned writing this book, what surprised you the most?

NJS: The level of normalized sexism. It's more extreme than when I was a girl. You'd think things were getting better for girls - there's more women in college, the pay gap is closing ever so slightly. It's gotten a bit better. But I think the inequality in the social realm is worse. I think a lot of women my age are noticing how lives of younger women are becoming sexualized because it became normal.

There's a connection I draw in the book between the normalization of sexual harassment on social media and the way it's being normalized offline, in real life. I think we can all agree that sexual harassment on the street is unacceptable. But what really is the difference between that and sexualized comments online? We don't even have a word for it - we need a word for when someone writes "slut" on your picture and the feeling that you're not supposed to object because you'll be bullied for it. Is that supposed to be nice? Do we believe that's OK? No, so why is it acceptable on social media?

How has social media changed the dynamic between teen girls and boys, based on your research?

NJS: Porn has everything to do with it. Kids are watching porn either on purpose or accidentally and the law says no one under 18 should have access to it, but they do. That means they're exposed to explicit content very young whether they want to be or not. Porn sites use social media to advertise and people post pornographic photos on social media. That's a lot of explicit content kids are seeing online and this is not porn like it used to be. This is violent imagery where the hallmarks are women being hurt or humiliated. ... Scenarios of rape and gang rape are common in porn, and it all impacts how kids see how men and women interact with each other.

Porn's been around for a while, but enter social media, enter the smartphone and it becomes this environment where kids communicate and learn about sex from a screen. For many of the girls I interviewed, their first sexual encounters don't necessarily involve face-to-face interactions. They get a text asking for a nude pic. Screens are where boys see women objectified and they see girls in real life the same way they see porn stars. They see porn as sex ed, but it's sex ed that teaches them that girls are a means to their gratification and nothing more.

What's the most important thing you want readers to take away from this book?

NJS: That we need to respect girls. We need to see them as human beings and listen to them. The book is in their voices because I like what they say and it's more interesting and revealing than anything I could say. I want people to listen to them because they're women in progress. We hear this debate now that's everywhere about consent and these are the questions we need to be asking - what is consent? This is all very dangerous, blurry territory for boys, too.

Let's talk about boys, because this issue affects them, too.

NJS: This book is for mothers of sons just as much as it is for girls. Look, they're children. We adults - and we, who make these social media sites and turn away when bad things start happening - we're doing this, we're making them this way. We think of Facebook as "the mom site" now, but there are porn pages on Facebook and they can be very hard to get taken down. How is that possible? Why is that even a conversation?

I'm a journalist and I'm passionate about free speech, but I don't see that as the First Amendment. It's just not the same thing. It's a topsy-turvy situation where these ideas get conflated - it's like the idea that sexual positivity and porn positivity are the same thing. Sorry, they're not. That's insane.

These issues go really deep and are really important for boys and girls. It's been decades we've been talking about (gender equality and sexual harassment) and it's almost like we have to start talking about it all over again because (social media) has changed everything and you can't throw a rock in this country without hitting a mom or a dad who's worried about this.

DN: So what do you think needs to change here, because neither porn nor social media are going away.

NJS: There's a serious loss of innocence that's happening among small children when this (porn) is their example of love and marriage. But when parents are armed with information, they can make their own decisions about what to do.

This isn't even about sex. This is about what kind of human being you are in terms of how you view others, in terms of whether or not you're able to show sensitivity and gentleness to others. This isn't just about how you treat someone when you take your clothes off, it speaks to how you treat others period, in all realms. Parents should have the power to make the decision about whether or not their kids see porn. It's not appropriate for these things to just pop up anywhere online. That right has been quietly taken away from parents. Before I wrote this book, I thought porn didn't affect me, so who cares? But that's not what's happening. Porn is not only an issue in the lives of grown adults who choose to see it, it's an issue in lives of children who see it and it's engulfing their culture.

This can all change if people get informed. I don't want anyone to get me wrong - there are things about social media that can be great. But there's a dark side, too. One thing I know is that this isn't going to last forever, this state of things, because people are beginning to realize this is not acceptable and they'll take action when they wake up. There's a ton of information out there, but you have to want to make yourself aware of it.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: ChandraMJohnson

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How social media has changed the dynamic between teen girls and boys

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Growing up is tough for anyone, but it's even harder for kids today who grow up navigating puberty and relationships through a screen. That's what journalist, author and mom Nancy Jo Sales argues in her new book, "American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers."

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NOTE: Some of the names and identifying details in this story have been changed.
THE TINDER GUY
She wanted it to be like the scene in the Lana Del Rey video for "Blue Jeans"-"hot and slow and epic." The scene where strangers meet and fall into an easy intimacy, making love in a pool-"and they look so hot and it's just, like, totally epic." A boy at her school-she didn't want to talk about him now; he'd broken her heart; but "like, whatever." She'd "deleted him" from her phone. "I was stalking him too much, seeing him doing fun things on Instagram, and it hurt."

They'd been instant-messaging on Facebook, and one night he told her he loved her. And then "I found out he was talking to, like, four other girls." And now she wanted to do something to get over it, maybe to get back at him. "I mean, I should have known. All men are basically whores." When he didn't turn out to be her "true love"-"like Bella and Edward, or Bella and Jacob, you know?"-she decided she had to "lose it to someone," so why not with someone she would never have to see again? And yet, she hoped it would somehow be like the Lana Del Rey song. "I will love you till the end of time," it goes.

The guy she was supposed to meet that day-the guy from Tinder, the dating app kids were using to hook up-"I know, like, five guys who've done it; girls use it too, but they pretend like they don't"-he was cute and had tattoos on his arms. He looked "James Franco-ish," but younger. On Tinder you could meet people in your age group. She was 16; he was 17.

Alone in her room, the night before, reading her friends' Twitter feeds and watching YouTube videos (Selena Gomez and "baby animals being cute"), she'd started feeling lonely, restless, and bored. "Sometimes I just want to talk to a guy so bad." So she downloaded the app and started swiping through the pictures of boys in her area. She "hearted" his picture, and within a few minutes he had hearted hers, and then they were instantly texting.

"Ur hot," he wrote. "U wanna meet?"

"When?"

They arranged to rendezvous at a shopping mall in Los Angeles not far from the neighborhood where they lived. "Of course it was going to be a public place. And if it turned out he was really some gross old man, I'd just run away." But there he was, standing by his car, looking almost like his picture. . . . Almost. There was something different about his face-it was "squishier. Like, he was almost fat." But now here they were, and she didn't know quite how to get out of it.

He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. He smelled of Axe Body Spray. She was sorry she'd spent so much time getting ready for this. "I even waxed," she said. He wanted her to get in his car, but she knew she shouldn't. They started walking around the mall, "talking about nothing, nothing. It was awkward, totally weird." He asked if she wanted to sit down, but there was nowhere to sit except in restaurants, so they wound up going inside a Pottery Barn and making out on a couch. Later she posted something on her Tumblr blog about the difficulty of finding love.
WHEELING IN THE BITCHES
"Gotta wheel the bitches in. Gotta wheel the bitches in," said the teenage boy on a city bus in New York. "Nowadays you can do it so easy. There are so many apps and shit that just, like, hand you the girls. They don't even know that's what they're doing, but really they're just giving teenagers ways to have sex."
SEX, LIES, AND SOCIAL MEDIA
If you're between 8 and 18, you spend more than 11 hours a day plugged into an electronic device. The average American teen now spends nearly every waking moment on a smart phone or computer or watching TV. This seismic shift in how kids spend their time is having a profound effect on the way they make friends, the way they date, and their introduction to the world of sex.

Kids have always been interested in sex, of course; but there have never been more ways for them to express that to one another, at any moment of the day, no matter where they are. They don't even have to be together, and often they are not. "You can be sitting in class getting a boner 'cause some girl is texting you that she wants to suck your dick," said a boy in L.A. "It's kind of distracting."

As quickly as new social media appears, teens seem to find ways to use it to have sex, often sex devoid of even any pretense of emotional intimacy. There's sexting, and there's Snapchat, where teenagers share pictures of their bodies or body parts; on Skype, sometimes they strip for each other or masturbate together. On Omegle, they can talk to strangers, and sometimes the talk turns sexual. A boy in L.A. told me about a boy he knew who had a PayPal account where he accepted payment for being sexual online with "random guys . . . Two hundred bucks." And then there is Tinder, where kids can meet each other on their phones. "It's like Grindr used to be for gay guys, but now kids are doing it," said a girl in L.A. "No one cares about anything but how you look."

"We don't date; we just hook up," another girl in L.A. told me. "Even people who get in a relationship, it usually starts with a hookup." Which can mean anything from making out to having sex. "When you have sex with a guy, they want it to be like a porno," said a 19-year-old girl in New York. "They want anal and oral right away. Oral is, like, the new kissing." "The cum shot in the face is a big thing," said another girl.

And then there are "texting relationships," a disembodied coupling that takes place solely on a screen. It can still become very sexual, often very quickly. "Guys you know from just, like, having one class together will be like, 'Do you like to suck dick?'" said a 17-year-old girl in New York. "And if you say no, they just move on to the next person."
THE GIRLS AT THE GROVE
"Social media is destroying our lives," said the girl at the Grove.

"So why don't you go off it?" I asked.

"Because then we would have no life," said her friend.

The girls had been celebrating a birthday at the busy L.A. mall, and now they were on their way home; they carried bags of leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory. There were four of them: Melissa, Zoe, Padma, and Greta.* They stopped to sit down and talk awhile at an outdoor table.

They were pretty girls with long straight hair-two blonde, two brunette, all aged 16. They wore sleeveless summer dresses and looked fresh and sweet. They went to a magnet high school in L.A.

Greta, they said, was famous-or Instafamous, having thousands of followers on Instagram. She showed me a gallery of her Instapics; some were of her dog and some were of Greta pouting and wearing "the duck face." Some of her followers, she said, were "random dudes in Italy and Arabia."

Melissa said, "I have Facebook, a YouTube account. I've used Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine . . . "

"Path, Skype," Zoe said.

"Tumblr," said Padma.

"I have a Twitter, but I don't use it except for stalking other people," said Greta.

They all laughed knowingly.

"I think everyone does it," Greta said. "Everyone looks through other people's profiles, but especially being teenage girls, we look at the profiles of the males we find attractive and we stalk the females the males find attractive."

"It's a way to get to know them without the awkward 'Oh, what do you like to do?' You already know," said Padma.

"You can know their likes and dislikes," Greta said. "'Oh, they like this band.' So you can, like, casually wear that band's T-shirt and have them, like, fall in love with you or something. Or you can be like, 'Oh, they listen to that music? Ew. Go away.'"

I asked them how they knew when a boy liked them.

"When a boy likes your [Facebook] profile pic or almost anything you post, it means that they're stalking you, too. Which means they have interest in you," said Zoe.

I asked them how they made the transition from social-media interaction to real-world interaction.

They blinked.

"You talk to them on Facebook; you do chat with them," Melissa said.

I asked if they had boyfriends.

"There's this boy Seth," said Greta, "and when he liked my profile picture, I knew it was like, 'Hey, 'sup, you cute.' Then we held hands at a party. We were cute. But the one thing I didn't like about him was he didn't follow me back on Instagram. Social media causes soooooo much anxiety."

They all agreed on that.

"The thing with social media is, if a guy doesn't respond to you or doesn't, like, stalk you back, then you're gonna feel rejected," said Melissa.

"And rejection hurts," said Padma.

"And then you're gonna go, like, look for another person to fill that void and you're gonna move on to stalking someone else," Melissa said.

"That's how men become such whores," said Greta.

"Guys actually take the Facebook-talking situation way too far," meaning sexually, said Zoe.

They were nodding their heads.

"Like, when guys start a Facebook thing, they want too much," said Padma. "They want to get some. They try with different girls to see who would give more of themselves."

"It leads to major man-whoring," Greta said.

"They're definitely more forward to us online than in person," said Zoe. "Because they're not saying it to our faces."

"This guy Seth, who is normally timid in real life," said Greta, "sends girls messages asking for nudes."

She showed me a text exchange in which Seth had asked her to "send pics"-meaning nude pics, a request Seth had punctuated with a smiley face. Greta had responded "Lololol" and "Hahahaha" and "Nope." "It wasn't THAT funny," Seth had texted back.

"He isn't my boyfriend," clarified Greta.

"My friend, she was VC-ing," or video chatting, "this guy she was kind of dating," Melissa said. "He sent so many nudes to her, but she wasn't trusting that he wouldn't show the pictures to other people. So she Skyped him and showed him nudes that way. He took a screenshot without her knowing it. He sent it to so many people and the entire baseball team. She was whispered about and called names. It's never gone away. He still has it and won't delete it."

I asked if they knew girls who posted provocative pictures of themselves. They all said yes.

"More provocative equals more likes," said Greta.

"It attracts more guys and then it makes other girls think about doing it just for the attention. They're attention whores," said Padma, frowning.

"My father thinks all my photos are provocative," Greta mused.

"I think some girls post slutty pictures of themselves to show guys the side to them that guys want to see," said Zoe. "It's annoying."

"Girls call them sluts. Boys call it hot," said Padma.

Greta shrugged. "I call it hilarious."
MIRROR, MIRROR
In the video for "We Can't Stop," Miley Cyrus writhes around on a bed, sticking her ass up in the air. She grinds her ass into the crotch of a woman twerking. She writhes around in an empty bathtub, sticking her ass in the air some more. She appears at the V.M.A.'s twerking into the crotch of Robin Thicke, causing an international sensation.

In the video for "Summer Fling," Willow Smith stares at the nipple of a teenage boy while offering him her phone number. Willow's 12. She sings about having a summer fling: "It's just a couple nights, but we do it anyway." A boy shoots water into a pool party at which Willow and her bikini-clad friends jump on a trampoline, spreading their legs.

"Of course girls want to emulate this stuff," Kim Goldman said one afternoon at her home. Goldman is the director of the Santa Clarita Valley Youth Project, a counseling service for teens that reaches around 23,000 kids in 14 schools in the district. (She's also the sister of Ron Goldman, the man slain along with Nicole Brown Simpson, the ex-wife of O. J. Simpson.) "Girls talk about feeling like they have to be like what they see on TV," she said. "They talk about body-image issues and not having any role models. They all want to be like the Kardashians. Kendall Jenner posts bikini shots when she's 16 and gets 10,000 likes, and girls see that's what you do to get attention."

Santa Clarita, an affluent community nestled in the arid Santa Susana Mountains north of L.A., has its share of troubled kids. There's been a rash of heroin-related deaths over the last year. A Facebook page entitled "Santa Clarita Sluts" was finally taken down. In January, Michael Downs, a local teen, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting 15 girls (one a 12-year-old), many of whom he met on Facebook.

"We're seeing depression, anxiety, feelings of isolation," said Goldman. "I think social media is contributing to these things. We have kids who've had sex with people they meet on Chat Roulette. At one of the junior highs we work with, we found out there were a few kids engaging in an online orgy. They all signed into a video chat room." One of their parents walked in on it.

"We had girls selling oral sex for $10 and $15 in the bathroom at a school," said Goldman. "Sex is everywhere. Everything is sexualized. They're all reading Fifty Shades of Grey."
CYBER-QUEENS
On a bright, hot day in June, I met Sydney at the Popover Café on the Upper West Side. She was blonde and angelic looking, like a girl from a Beaux Arts painting of the 1890s; she was 17.

She gave me her headshot; I'm not sure why. She said she wants to be an actress.

"I was cyber-bullied when I was younger," she said over popovers, "on this [social-media site for kids]. It was this thing where you create a profile of a cartoon character, and this random stranger started talking to me and saying really creepy things. I was in sixth grade.

"I didn't know who it was at first. It turned out it was one of the girls at my school," a private girls' school in Manhattan. "She was saying, like, all this sexual stuff. I don't even know how she learned how to talk that way.

"I was 11 years old, and I didn't know how to respond. And then she and her friends took screenshots [of the conversations] and spread them around and started calling me a slut." She winced.

"I was completely traumatized. I had to switch schools. I became insanely insecure." But nothing ever happened to the girls who bullied her. "I begged my mom not to bring the school into it. I didn't want to be that girl that tattletaled."

And then a few years later, she saw her former victimizers on Facebook. "They kept stalking me and I was curious, so I friended them back." That's when she found out that these girls had become "famous."

"In New York every kid knows each other," and some kids are "famous," Sydney said. "Everyone's obsessed with the feeling they have fame. They post pictures of themselves at certain parties. They friend certain kids. There's so much social climbing."

Her bullies were now two of the most visible girls in the Manhattan high-school scene, the type of girls who "go clubbing with 21-year-olds" and get invited to "events." "One of their moms has, like, a clothing line." On her iPhone, Sydney showed me the girls' Facebook pages, where they had posted many pictures of themselves partying in nightclubs and posing, hand on hip, Paris Hilton-style, surrounded by Euro-looking men. These pictures got a lot of likes.

"They dress like sluts," Sydney said, "in bandeaus and short shorts that show your butt cheeks-excuse me, you're not at the beach." She admitted she sometimes dressed like that too. "Because if you don't, you will get shunned. Girls are just so mean.

"I don't go into the bathrooms at school," she said, "'cause they just say mean stuff to you. They look at you up and down like, 'What are you wearing?' Social media makes it so much worse. Like on Ask.fm"-a social-networking site with 65 million users, half under the age of 18, on which subscribers are invited to speak their minds about each other-"they just say mean, mean, mean, mean things.

"I love Tumblr," she said, "'cause it's just kids expressing themselves with writing and pictures; but it's also a lot about how to look and dress, and it makes a lot of girls feel bad 'cause there'll be beautiful girls with beautiful everything and everyone re-posts it, and, like, it makes you feel bad about all the things you're doing wrong.

"On Tumblr there's 'The Rich Kids of Instagram,' which is these kids trying to show off their wealth, and it's so not O.K., it's revolting, but it still makes me feel bad about myself-kind of like I'm not part of it."

She said there was a term for this, FOMO-fear of missing out.

She told me about parties where girls "literally wear nothing" and kids take Molly, MDMA. "The 'in' thing for girls to do is to really just go nuts at parties, just go insane. They feel like the more they drink and the crazier they act, the more guys will come to them." Crazy how? "Dancing around, flashing their boobs."

At these parties, she said, which take place "at people's houses or a space somebody rents out to make money," "people hook up with more than one person. It's dark and, like, 100 kids are there. It's not considered a big deal. Guys try and hook up with as many girls as possible."

"At one party?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "They have lists and stuff. This kid in my grade has this list of 92 girls he's hooked up with."
"BAD GIRLS"
"We know this girl Ursula that had a list of guys she had given blow jobs to, like 45 people," said Sarah. Sarah and her friends Elena, Jeff, and Abby, all teenagers from the Valley, were having dinner in L.A. one night before going to a movie.

Over burgers and fries at an outdoor café, they started talking about the "bad girls" at their high school.

"Ava's like that too," said Jeff. "She asked me out and then took my head and, like, shoved it in her bra."

"She gave Richie a hand job on the back of the bus going to band competition," said Sarah.

They talked about girls who had made sex tapes; girls who had sex with different guys at parties every weekend. "Was that the same weekend she went to the emergency room [for drugs]?" asked Abby.

"Remember when Anita got semen on Maya's jacket?" Jeff asked with a smile.

"And then Maya posted it on her [Facebook] wall," Sarah said with a laugh.

"She asked to borrow Maya's jacket and she wore the jacket, and she gave this guy a blow job at a party while she was wearing the jacket," said Jeff.

"And then she gave the jacket back to Maya without washing it, so Maya took a picture of the jacket with the stain and posted it on Anita's wall: 'You didn't wash my jacket,'" said Sarah.

They laughed.

"Which was so mean, but I love that she did that," Jeff said. "I was like, 'Oh my God. '"

They laughed again.

"There was this girl in 10th grade who was gonna be on My Super Sweet Sixteen, " said Jeff. "I don't think it ever aired. That same girl, she was in a porn video going around school. People were in math class watching the video."
SELFIES
"I first started seeing people doing selfies in sixth grade," said Emily, a senior at a private school in L.A. "Back then everybody was on MySpace. In sixth grade everybody started getting phones and they started posting pictures of themselves, and it was weird, 'cause, like, a lot of the pictures were supposed to look sexy and they had the duck face and we were all, like, 11."

"Guys do selfies, too," said Alexandra, a girl at a public high school in L.A. "They post pictures of themselves smoking weed and drinking codeine cup"-a narcotic mixture of Jolly Ranchers, cough syrup, and 7-UP-"like, 'Look how boss I am, look how gangster.' They think that makes them hot. If a guy posts a picture in his boxer shorts, people say that's funny, but if a girl does it, they say she's a slut. It's a double standard, but girls still do it 'cause it gets them more likes on Facebook."

"My little cousin, she's 13, and she posts such inappropriate pictures on Instagram, and boys post sexual comments, and she's like, 'Thank you,'" said Marley, a New York public-school girl. "It's child pornography, and everyone's looking at it on their iPhones in the cafeteria."
SEXY BABIES
Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus are the co-directors of Sexy Baby (2012), a documentary about girls and women in the age of porn. It follows three subjects: Nichole, 32, a porn star who bemoans the mainstreaming of porn in the digital age (she thinks it's unhealthy); Laura, 22, who has plastic surgery on her labia (her ex-boyfriend deemed them unattractive) so that she can "look like a porn star"; and Winnifred, 12, a middle-school student in New York who does sexy photo shoots with her friends and posts them on Facebook. Winnifred also posts a video of her little sister dancing around provocatively to a pop song.

Gradus, a photographer for *The Miami Herald,*was on assignment shooting strip clubs in Miami in 2009 when she first encountered young women who were not professional strippers pole-dancing for young men. "These were regular college girls. They didn't seem to be having fun," she said. "It was like, 'This is what we're supposed to be doing.'"

Gradus and Bauer, a writer for the Herald, then went on a research mission to a porn convention in Miami where "they were selling stripper poles to college girls and housewives," said Bauer. "There were so many mainstream women idolizing the porn stars and running after them to take pictures, and we were like, 'Whoa, this exists?'"

"We saw these girls embracing this idea that 'If I want to be like a porn star, it's so liberating,'" Gradus said. "We were skeptical. But it was such a broad concept. We asked, 'What is this shift in our sexual attitudes, and how do we define this?' I guess the common thread we saw that is creating this is technology.

"Technology being so available made every girl or woman capable of being a porn star, or thinking they're a porn star," said Gradus. "They're objectifying themselves. The thinking is: 'If I'm in control of it, then I'm not objectified.'"
PORN HISTORY
Porn is more available now than at any time in history-especially to kids. Ninety-three percent of boys and 62 percent of girls have seen Internet porn before they turn 18, according to a 2008 study in CyberPsychology & Behavior. Seventy percent of boys have spent more than 30 minutes looking at porn, as have 23 percent of girls. Eighty-three percent of boys and 57 percent of girls have seen group sex online. Eighteen percent of boys and 10 percent of girls have seen rape or sexual violence.

"Historically a spike in interest in pornography is associated with advancement in women's rights," said April Alliston, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton. She teaches a class on the history of pornography and has an upcoming book about porn, Consenting Adults: On Pornography, Privacy and Freedom (2013).

"What happened at the time of the invention of the printing press was very similar to what's happening now with the Internet," Alliston said. "With the printing press you had porn suddenly made available through technology. At the same time you had women getting more rights; there was more literacy and freedom for women. I see the spread of porn in part as a backlash to women's increased independence.

"I believe that porn has gone mainstream now because women have been gaining power. The feminist movement was somewhat successful. Rather than being about sexual liberation, porn is a form of control over sex and sexuality.

"It's become unfashionable to [take a negative view of porn] because of the reaction to the extreme anti-pornography views of [radical feminists] Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon in the 90s. There was a reaction to their calls for censorship, and at the same time you had 'sex-positive feminists,' as they called themselves, saying porn is good, saying sex is the same thing as pornography, and seeming to imply that if we like sex, we like pornography too, which I think is equally extreme and incorrect.

"When it comes to children, there is really nothing to argue about," Alliston went on. "Kids are defined by our laws as not being able to consent to sex or to using pornography. There are few protections against them seeing it, and some people take the attitude that it's inevitable and benign. I think a lot of people who make this argument don't realize what porn today really looks like in terms of how the women are treated."
THE ANTI-DAPHNE MOVEMENT
"In the eighth grade, I had friend-it was a toxic friendship," said Daphne, now 19 and in college in L.A. "We got into a fight. I can't even remember what it was about-probably I had bought the same shoes as her or something. It got really bad, and one of her friends, a guy, decided to make a YouTube video starting an 'Anti-Daphne Movement.'

"Their goal was to get me to kill myself.

"It was, like, a 10-minute video. He showed a picture of me. He said my name. He recounted all the details of the fight. He said I was ugly and that I should kill myself. He told everyone on Facebook, 'I'm a member of this movement. If Daphne has ever done anything to you, post about it.'

"It caught on really fast. I had a lot of people writing really mean messages to me and deleting me as a friend [on Facebook]. I had never done anything to these people. At school they would put gross things in my bag, cottage cheese in my binder. It got over all my homework.

"It took three months before I got the courage to tell my dad. My dad got the school to get [the boy] to take the video down. The guy who did it didn't get in any trouble. The principal was friends with his mom. The principal said I must have done something bad for him to act that way, and I was actually suspended for a few days.

"I didn't know this boy at all. He was kind of a weird kid. People thought he was quirky and cool. He would say he was 'brutally honest,' but mostly he was just rude to people. I had to stay in the same school with him all through eighth grade. I went into therapy for what happened. It's made me so much more insecure. It's really hard for me to trust anyone."
THE SCENE GIRL
Amanda, 17, a senior at a high school in Santa Clarita, tried to kill herself last year. Her boyfriend of eight months had broken up with her so that he could play the field before graduating from high school-"he just wanted to live it up, was what he said"-and, after some months of turmoil, Amanda took an overdose of one of her mother's prescription medications. She was hospitalized briefly and is now in therapy.

She'd been slut-shamed on Facebook in ninth grade by a girl at her school, along with the girl's mother. "She"-the mother-"was saying I was a slut and all I do is lay on my back, but I've only been with one person," Amanda said. The police said nothing could be done about it because no direct threats were made.

Feeling isolated and depressed, Amanda got into drugs, ecstasy, and weed, and started hanging out with the Scene kids (kids into hard-core punk rock). "All I talked about was sex, drugs, money, and partying," she said. "I'd post pictures on Facebook of me smoking weed and partying."

When she started dating her boyfriend, with whom she went to school, she finally felt as if she had something to live for. "We were like the one couple that everybody knew, that everyone was like, 'You're so cute. You're gonna be together for a really long time.'" And now that she had a steady boyfriend, she was no longer called a slut.

But that ended all too soon. She attributes her boyfriend breaking up with her to the influence of his friends. "All his friends were like, 'Dude, you have a girlfriend. You can't do anything,'" meaning sexually, with other girls. And, Amanda says, he confessed that after breaking up with her, he did sleep with another girl.

"Boys have no respect for girls," Amanda said. "They'll be like, 'Damn, that girl's hot. I'd fuck her.'"
THE SEX EDUCATION OF JENNA: PART I
"One reason my boyfriend broke up with me senior year was that I was not a real person," said Jenna, 19, a college student in New York. She and her boyfriend dated online for two years after meeting at a beach resort where their families stayed when they were in high school. They communicated via Facebook, e-mail, and text. They met in person only twice. "I sat there and contemplated suicide when I heard he wanted to break up with me," she said. "I was like, 'What was the point of living?' I had given so much of myself to this person."

Jenna, a quirky beauty of the Zooey Deschanel variety, aspires to a job in the arts; her senior year in high school, she got a job working prefessionally in her chosen field. She friended a boy on Facebook, also an aspiring artist, who had already gotten some attention for his work. "I was like, 'Let's stick together and be friends and do this together,'" she said. They became good friends (in cyberspace). And then the boy developed feelings for her. But at the time Jenna was still dating her online boyfriend, so she declined the artist boy's online advances.

"After that, every time I would do any kind of status update on Facebook or post something on Tumblr or Instagram," she said, "he would comment on it, like, 'Jenna, you're not funny.'" Jenna often posted comical status updates; she thought of herself as a funny girl; she'd always liked to make people laugh. "He got everyone at my school"-a Manhattan magnet school-"in on it," she said. "His sister went there, so we knew a lot of the same people. Suddenly everyone was like, 'Jenna's not funny. She's stupid.' Everyone was posting mean comments about me, and he was egging them on. I saw him at a play at my school, and I asked him, 'Why are you doing this to me?' He said, 'Because, Jenna, you deserve it.'"

After that, she said, "I lost all my self-confidence. . . . And I realized in life there's only two ways for a girl to go, and that's to be a dumb bitch or just a bitch. I decided that from now on I'm just gonna be a bitch, 'cause at least from now on guys would be intimidated by me. At least I would have the upper hand. So from then on, if anybody ever tried to say anything to me, I would come back at them 30 times harder."
BREAKING UP IS HARDER TO DO
"So you broke up with your ex-boyfriend," said a freshman girl at a college in Manhattan; she was speaking hypothetically. "It's very sad. So of course he's not gonna want to see you in real life, so you wanna see him on Facebook. But then he defriends you on Facebook, so what do you do? You get your friend's account so you can stalk him. You check up on him on her account.

"But then he deletes your friend; he figures it out. So right now you have no connection to him, so what do you do? You create a fake account . . . call her [Jane Doe]. You literally Google 'brown-haired girl Instagram' and find a picture where you can't really see their face, but it's an actual person. You friend a bunch of his friends as [Jane Doe], add people from his family. Then you add his ex-girlfriends.

"What are they like? What are they into? What's the difference between them and me? Are they skinner than me? In their profile picture, they're in a bikini-they must be sluts, right? Maybe lesbians. And then finally after you have about 400 mutual friends, that's when you add him. This is so intelligent; it's like war strategy.

"You add some more pictures. You start a new persona. You start a new life, just so you can keep tabs on the person who doesn't want to ever speak to you again. Just so you can know he goes out to clubs all the time, and he's with this other girl. Why would you do it? Because it's an obsession. Social media breeds obsession."
SEX AND THE SOUL
What kind of love lives are teenagers headed for after they graduate high school? Sadly, more of the same, according to Donna Freitas, a former professor of religion at Hofstra and Boston Universities. Freitas's The End of Sex (2013) might as well be called The End of Love. The book studies hook-up culture on college campuses.

Much has been written about hook-up culture lately, notably Hanna Rosin's The End of Men (2012) and a July New York Times article, "Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game Too," both of which attributed the trend to feminism and ambitious young women's desire not to be tied down by relationships.

But Freitas's research, conducted over a year on seven college campuses, tells a different story. "Both young women and young men are seriously unhappy with the way things are," she said. "It's rare that I find a young woman or a man who says hooking up is the best thing ever."

She describes the sex life of the average college kid as " Mad Men sex, boring and ambivalent. They drink like they're Don Draper to drown out what is really going on with them. Sex is something you're not to care about. The reason for hooking up is less about pleasure and fun than performance and gossip-it's being able to update [on social media] about it. Social media is fostering a very unthinking and unfeeling culture. We're raising our kids to be performers." And researchers are now seeing an increase in erectile dysfunction among college-age men-related, Freitas believes, to their performance anxiety from watching pornography: "The mainstreaming of porn is tremendously affecting what's expected of them." College kids, both male and female, also routinely rate each other's sexual performance on social media, often derisively, causing anxiety for everyone.

"The conversation that is missing is what rape is in hook-up culture," Freitas said. "These young women's sense of their own agency is incredibly detached. They tell me, 'And then I found myself in someone's bed having sex.' There's little actual choice or volition when you are drunk, and there is this expectation among everyone that if you are walking with a boy to your dorm room after a party, sex will necessarily happen."

And yet, with all the dangers for young women in hook-up culture, Freitas says, she's faced criticism from feminist colleagues for her take on it. "Big-time feminists won't go near hooking up because they look at it in theory as a sexually liberated practice," she said. "But I'm looking at it on the ground, talking to actual people, and it doesn't hold up as sexual liberation."
THE SEX EDUCATION OF JENNA: PART II
At the end of junior year of high school, Jenna met Ethan. "We were drunk, we hooked up," she said. "We saw each other again, drunk at another party, so we hooked up again, then we met at after-prom and hooked up 'cause we had hooked up before, and so it was comfortable and whatever."

And so began their non-romance. In fact, Jenna made it clear to Ethan that she didn't want "a Facebook relationship. There's people who have Facebook relationships where every day it's like"-typical status update, delivered in a singsong-"'Out to lunch with babe.' Kissy picture of this, kissy picture of that. Two weeks later, they're broken up. And then it's"-bitchy voice doing the status update-"' Certain people need to, like, stop stalking me on Facebook. Clearly we are never getting back together.' There's the Taylor Swifts and then there's the people who are just long-hair-don't-care. They just don't give a single fuck. They're just like, 'I'm gonna have sex with you.' 'I'm gonna have sex with you.' 'Hey, you're cute. I'm gonna have sex with you too if I want to.' They don't give a shit."

That, she told Ethan, was how it was going to be. "I told him it was just hooking up. I was so used to guys treating me like shit, I didn't want any guy to take advantage of me."

And Ethan took her words to heart. "He said, O.K., he wanted to hook up with other girls. And I was like, 'Sure, if you don't want to be in a relationship with me, I don't really care.' So I was like, 'Fine, I'll start hooking up with other guys.' So I would come to his house-no nonsense, clothes off, let's do this, get into my bed. And we would hook up every couple days; it started being a casual thing."

This went on for about a year. "We were friends with benefits," Jenna said. "Sometimes we wouldn't even talk that much. I'd just be like, 'I'm coming over,' and then I'd go over and we'd sleep together and then I'd leave."

Even when Ethan, drunk at another party, admitted to Jenna that "I think of you as my girlfriend," she told him, "'I would never, ever in my fucking life be your girlfriend.' Immediately his face fell and he walked away, and after that we were pretty mean to each other."

They still continued hooking up. And then, last spring, Jenna's grandfather died, and Jenna was furious with Ethan when he didn't reach out to console her. "I finally texted him like, 'My grandfather died and you have nothing to say to me? And I've been sleeping with you for a year?' And his response was, 'So I really just don't see why you said I could never be your boyfriend.'"

She smiled.

"So we realized we were being super stupid, and I was like, 'Do you want to be in a relationship? What do you want?' And he was like, 'I really love you. I've never met anybody like you. You're not a dumb bitch.'

"So now we're together."

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What Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, Instagram, and Internet Porn Are Doing to America's Teenage Girls

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NOTE: Some of the names and identifying details in this story have been changed. THE TINDER GUY She wanted it to be like the scene in the Lana Del Rey video for "Blue Jeans"-"hot and slow and epic."

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Social Media and Secret Lives of American Teenage Girls

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Social Media and Secret Lives of American Teenage Girls

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Once upon a time, only the wealthy and privileged could afford to have their portraits painted by a small, select circle of artists. With the advent of photography, parents of all backgrounds could have pictures of their children, which were coveted as documents of their development and a way to show off their innocent beauty and charm to family and friends.

Today, with smartphones and social media, we all have in our hands the means to broadcast our pride and joy to the world. And we are cultivating our children's online selves from birth-or even before, in utero. Ninety-two percent of American children have an online presence before the age of 2. Parents post nearly 1,000 images of their children online before their fifth birthday. "Sharenting" has given parenting a whole new dimension: viewer-rated performance.

The usual debate centers on whether posting pictures of one's children's online-or allowing one's children to do so-is safe from a privacy or security standpoint. And as we have seen in the recent abduction and murder of 13-year-old Nicole Lovell of Blacksburg, Va., concerns about online predators are more than just a moral panic: they stem from something real. Lovell reportedly texted with one of her alleged killers, 18-year-old David Eisenhauer, a Virginia Tech student, on Kik Messenger, an app known among kids as a place for the exchange of sexts and nude selfies.

But while we're consumed by the tangible dangers of messenging services like Kik, Yik Yak, After School and other anonymous apps, we may be missing a different influence: our own behavior. Kids today are often accused of being narcissistic, but they may be learning their exhibitionist ways from their parents. Accompanying the boom in selfie culture is a rise in competitive spirit, as well as a disturbing trend of sexualization. Likes, hearts, swipes-validation is only a tap away. And one of the easiest ways to get that validation is by looking hot. Sex sells, whether you're 13 or 35.

So it should come as no surprise that in this atmosphere, with the new technology available, sexting and sharing nudes have replaced other forms of intimacy. And it's girls-our daughters, granddaughters and nieces-who are most at risk in this online environment, which blends age-old sexism with a new notion of sexual liberation through being provocative.Girls who post provocative pictures often suffer slut shaming on- and offline. Girls are more often targeted in cyberbullying attacks that focus on their sexuality.

I spent the past 2½ years researching my new book American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, visiting 10 states and talking to more than 200 girls. It was talking to girls themselves that brought me to the subject of social media and what sexualization is doing to their psyches. How is it affecting their sense of self-worth? The tweens and teens I spoke to were often very troubled by the ways the culture of social media was exerting influence on their self-images and their relationships, with both friends and potential dating partners. They were often highly aware of the adverse effects of the sexualization on girls-but not always sure what to do about it.

"Sexism has filtered into new arenas that adults don't see or understand because they're not using social media the same way," says Katie, a student I interviewed at Barnard. "They think, Oh, how can there be anything wrong here if it's just Snapchat or Instagram-it's just a game." But if this is a game, it's unlike any other we've ever played. And the stakes for girls could not be higher.

Victim isn't a word I'd use to describe the kind of girls I've seen, surviving and thriving in an atmosphere that has become very hostile to them much of the time. How can this be, when girls are graduating from college in higher numbers than ever before, when they're becoming leaders in their chosen fields in greater numbers? From what we hear, American girls are among the most privileged and successful girls in the world. But tell that to a 13-year-old who gets called a slut and feels she can't walk into a school classroom because everybody will be staring at her, texting about her on their phones.

So why do some girls post sexualized pictures? Why are they complicit in this potentially very self-undermining aspect of socialmedia culture? "I think it's just to get attention," explains Lily, a 14-year-old in Garden City, N.Y., where I studied a group of girls for the book. "It's to get the likes. Everything's about the likes."

If building a social-media presence is similar to building a brand, then it makes a twisted kind of sense that girls-exposed from the earliest age to sexualized images, and encouraged by their parents' own obsession with self-promotion-are promoting their online selves with sex. In so doing, they're also following the example of the most successful social-media celebrities.

It's been almost 20 years since the brutal murder of JonBenét Ramsey magnified the horror of child beauty pageants-the extreme sexualization of the little girls, the skimpy costumes, garish makeup and risqué dance moves once associated with prostitution. In 1996, this seemed like a dark revelation, a national scandal. Then came Toddlers & Tiaras. Now, parents post videos of their daughters suggestively shimmying to Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj-videos that rack up approval ratings, sometimes even media attention and ad sales.

In Boca Raton, Fla., a wealthy coastal city with a population of around 90,000, about 50 miles north of Miami, I met Julie, Maggie, Cassy and Leah, a group of 13-year-old girls-two white, two Latina-at the Town Center Mall. Wearing short-shorts and tank tops, Converse and flip-flops, they glided along the air-conditioned halls past all the stores. Their mothers had dropped them off for lunch-chicken and waffles at the Grand Lux Café-and now they were stuffed, so they sat down on some couches to check their phones.

As the girls visited their social-media accounts, opening their Snapchats and liking and commenting on the Instagram posts of their friends, a parade of mothers and daughters drifted past, all dressed almost identically. There were teenage girls in booty shorts and cleavage-baring tops, and mothers wearing almost exactly the same things, except with heels and bling. They carried shopping bags from Neiman Marcus, DKNY and Pink.

I remarked to the girls how strange it seemed to see the mothers in the mall dressed so similarly to their daughters. "They want to look hot," said Cassy, not looking up from her phone.
"Everybody wants to look hot," Julie said.

"Their daughters look hot and they want to look like their daughters," Maggie said. "They think they're the Real Housewives."

The reluctance of baby boomers and Gen X-ers to grow old is not lost on girls. The resistance to aging has been evident in the success the beauty industry has had with "antiaging" products. The demand for plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures skyrocketed in the 2000s, with a 98% increase in procedures overall from 2000 to 2012, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The second most popular procedure for women ages 40 to 54 in 2014 was breast augmentation. The hypersexualization that has enveloped the lives of American girls seems to have also ensnared their moms.

One factor in sexualization that is too often ignored is the rise of online porn. Studies have reported that American children start seeing online porn as young as 6, and a majority have watched it before they turn 18. When kids have easy access to porn and are watching porn, it's not surprising that they are posting what might be identified as porn. In 2014 Vine, the video-sharing service on which users share six-second looping clips, banned "sexually explicit material" after reports that children were posting sexually charged videos of themselves on the site, including girls who looked as young as 9 or 11 years old.

Periodically in the news we hear about a "sexting ring," in which nude photographs of teens are circulated among wide groups of kids, as at a Cañon City, Colo., high school in late 2015. But these sorts of amateur pornography sites, known to kids as "slut pages," have actually become common and existed at every school I visited.

Some young feminists have argued that photos by girls in sexual poses are a valid expression of their sexuality. "Choice feminism" maintains that whatever a woman chooses is inherently a feminist act. But this doesn't take into account questions of exploitation surrounding images of underage girls-not to mention the fact that girls' nudes are often shared nonconsensually, which can wreak havoc on girls' lives.

No matter how various theorists try to minimize and even glamorize girls' participation in social-media culture, it is girls who experience the reality of its troubling effects.*
Sales is the author of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers (Knopf), out this month, from which this article was adapted. Copyright © 2016 by Nancy Jo Sales.

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Once upon a time, only the wealthy and privileged could afford to have their portraits painted by a small, select circle of artists. With the advent of photography, parents of all backgrounds could have pictures of their children, which were coveted as documents of their development and a way to show off their innocent beauty and charm to family and friends.