2008 shows to be carrying the unfortunate trend as well. Yesterday we brought you word of a murder mystery involving Facebook users and a conflict which arose over the shrouding and manipulation of their identities. Investigators in Toronto, Canada, where the homicide occurred, are now forced to contend with a block established by the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act.
And early this morning, The Buffalo News released a story concerning the predatory targeting of teenage girls by a MySpace user who had posted requests for connections to females on the network. The man, purported to be 20 years of age - but was truly a 48-year-old man known by the name of David W. Evans -proceeded to make contact online with dozens of site members, “some as young as 13,” of which several produced nude images of themselves at his insistence.
Evans, a cafeteria worker who the newspaper says lived a mostly solitary life in a single Buffalo, NY, apartment, was arrested in December for “coercing a minor to produce child pornography, a federal felony.”
Though it is unfortunate to say so, incidences such as these will likely only grow in volume as the social networking industry expands. As with any vast society of nearly infinite complexity, the good and the decent share the open terrain with less savory - and occasionally the criminally-inclined – individuals. No segment of the population is ever completely devoid of harmful characters, as people are by nature conscious and prone to both positive and negative influences on an almost daily basis, and affect positive and/or negative change equally as often.