Children facing the dangers of social media.

The risks

Exposure to shocking content

Many Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr accounts are dedicated to pornography, with mainly visual content (photos, videos). These are not filtered by administrators and can end up in everyone's feeds, as long as the friends are fans or have "Liked" the profile or have simply fallen into the panel by executing malicious code.

Scams

Due to their popularity, social networks are the preferred media for hackers to spread spam and scams. They compete in ingenuity to design attractive messages that invite to "Liker" a viral post with a corrupted link, applications containing viruses, phishing campaigns to extract login information, etc.

Harmful publications

On the Internet, everything can be copied pasted (and altered in the process), there is no guarantee of confidentiality in electronic exchanges via social networks. Photos taken at parties or naked can easily be seen by everyone, just like an insulting message written in a moment of nervousness. Young people do not hesitate to "tag" friends in group photos, without realizing that this action directly impacts the private view of tagged friends.

Bullying

Posting photos of a vacation or a party with friends can quickly get out of hand and turn into obscene diversion online with real-life impact. Intimidations, insults, hacking accounts, humiliating comments, creating discussion groups to mock the victim - the violence of relationships between young people can push the victim to suicide.

The phenomenon of training can lead the most easily influenced to imitate violent behavior and to embark on campaigns of insults against the scapegoat designated by the leader of the group. We call it cyber harassment

Ariane Desforges