Today’s infographic hits home with me because I was an actual teenage pioneer when it comes to the internet. Back in the late nineties and early 2000’s the internet was spreading like wildfire. AOL Instant Messenger, Xanga, LiveJournal and even MySpace were starting to gain traction with web-savvy teenagers. There is a very distinct difference between the sites and applications I used as a teen and the young-adults of today: privacy. Growing up a lot of the social applications I used we’re exclusive. You had to know your friend’s username in order to interact with them. There was a facet of anonymity which doesn’t exist in our present social sites.
This since of security created an online community of real-life close friends. It was a way to bring conversations with your friends home after school. With the proliferation of smartphones comes the increase of strangers in the teenage online community. Now a bully can message almost anyone from their school through facebook. A predator can interact with youth through a forum with a false identity. This increase in mass social interaction leads to extreme statistics on cyber bullying. 33% of teens admit to being cyber bullied in the past. The safety of our prosperity online is a growing problem and will only become worse as technology continues to connect us in more ways.
<img src="https://www.searchrpm.com/infographics/search-rpm-infograph-kids.jpg">
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<a href="http://www.searchrpm.com/">Internet Safety Infographic Provided by SearchRPM</a>