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Diana Alli
English 114B
Professor J. Rodrick
20 February 2016
Cyber Danger
When thinking of technology usually what comes to mind is the internet. The internet
and the advances technology has made with that alone has been ridiculous. It really is
another realm where there are no borders and everyone from all around the world are able
to connect. At first one would think wow, this is amazing!, which it is, but it is also a
very dangerous world out there as well. That is one thing that people fail to realize,
because of the anonymity that comes along with the online world, it is like a hunting
ground for predators, people more specifically children become more easily susceptible
to become victims of cyberbullying, catfishing and human trafficking making it and
extremely dangerous world where everyone is really at risk of being a victim.
The online world allows you to connect with people from anywhere and
everywhere, something at one point a person might not think possible. It is really an
amazing tool to stay connected with family and friends around the world, sometimes even
meeting people, but that is where it gets tricky. Due to the anonymity the online world
comes with you are never too sure who you are meeting, so it is like you are entering a
room with a blind fold on and this comes with many dangers. Sexual predators are
constantly lurking online making things like human trafficking now so common.
Predators will post ads that young people will click on and be tricked and lured into
something they think to be very normal and exciting, like a modeling opportunity but
come to find out it is nothing like they thought. In the article 70 Percent of Child Sex
Trafficking Victims are Sold Online: Study written by Robbie Couch in the Huffington

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Post it reads, "People are posted and sold online multiple times a day, Asia, a survivor
of sex trafficking, told Thorn. As far as the ad that was posted up [for me] just [like]
you can go find a car, there was a picture, and a description, and a price.(Couch). There
are stories like, In Illinois,
a 19-year-old female
responded to an Internet ad
promoting modeling
opportunities. Instead of
offering her a modeling job,
the offender enticed the girl
to wait in a hotel room
where she was expected to have sex with an unknown person. The offender, who would
become her pimp, intended to sell the young woman for sex at an hourly rate. In this case,
the pimps would-be client was an undercover police officer who brought the young
woman to safety (Human Trafficking and the Internet, Judge Dixon). The sad truth is not
all stories end like hers, some girls and boys never are saved, a lot never even found.
Sexual predators lurk in every corner on the online world and prey on nave
children that have access to social media and the internet where they are able to meet up
with strangers and become victim to their sick ways. In the embedded link is the story of
a 13-year-old girl that was tortured, raped and brutally beaten by an online predator. In
the online world people that do things like that are given more opportunity to do so. They
are able to pose as someone that these kids think they can trust, because of the anonymity,

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and then convince them to meet up and horrible things as such occur, not all the time but
more than it should.
Once a predator Instant
Messages or Chats with a victim and
gains their trust they often send
pornographic pictures via the IM
session or e-mail and sometimes
gifts through the mail. (Family Safe Computers). The numbers have been growing,
According to The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, in 2004 the
number of child pornography files (online) stood at 450,000. By 2011 the number had
increased to 17 million. I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that's roughly a 40x
increase (Couch). The numbers are ridiculously high and are growing every day.

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Sexual predators are not the only predators online though, some could be your
own classmates, when social media and
networking sites started to emerge so did
cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is the use of
electronic communication to bully a
person, typically by sending messages of an
intimidating or threatening nature
according to dictionary.com. Again the anonymity comes to play in this situation as well,
by giving the bully more courage to bully the victim but behind the screen. There have
been many stories of young teens experiences with it shared and even movies made
trying to bring awareness to this topic. For along time people did not acknowledge in its
severity but when teens started to show extreme reaction to it like depression, anxiety and
even suicide is when something had to be done.
A new form of danger has also emerged once the internet did and social media
platforms, when it became an avenue for dating, something called catfishing emerged.
This is when a person poses as someone else online, maybe a woman that is really a man
or someone that posts pictures of a very attractive person claiming it is themselves but it
really is not. Doing this has become so easy to do because of the anonymity that comes
with being online. It has become an epidemic on the online world and there is even a
show about it on MTV and people being caught in the act called, Catfished. Thousands of
people have their own story. Whether it be a little one or a huge one like they fell in love
with a person that ended up being someone else in person. Something we never really had
to worry about but now it is happening to 42% of all Americans that meet someone

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online, that is almost half! It has become an epidemic that was brought about because of
the internet and technology.
It is this generation new means of
bullying. The effects that this form of
bullying has on teens is quite astounding
and the amount of people that are unware
of it is even more astonishing. There are
some astounding facts about cyberbullying that some may have never known like, Over
half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online, and about the same number have
engaged in cyber bullying. Well over half of young people do not tell their parents when
cyber bullying occurs. (i-Safe foundation and Harford County Examiner).
The amount young teens that have taken their own lives due to this form
of bullying have grown as well and more awareness is being brought to this issue as it
should. But because of technology things like cyberbully can never be a problem we can
fully eliminate, though we can try and lessen the occurrence of it we can never rid of it.
Technology has made a large hunting ground for so many predators today and so many
people are becoming victim to them everyday. Since it is such a big platform one can
only try and lessen the problem but never fully rid of it. Technology like a lot of things in
life has its good sides but it also has its many down sides in the way people are able to
alter their identity and take advantage of those all over the world just by the click of a
mouse.

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Work Cited
Iliff, Rebekah. "Sex Trafficking: High Tech's Humanitarian Revolt Against the
Johns." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
Feature, Katherine KamWebMD. "4 Dangers of the Internet." WebMD. WebMD, n.d.
Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
Couch, Robbie. "70 Percent Of Child Sex Trafficking Victims Are Sold Online:
Study." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
"The Facts About Online Predators." The Facts About Online Predators. N.p., n.d. Web.
24 Feb. 2016.
"Advertisement." Human Trafficking and the Internet* (*and Other Technologies, Too).
N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
"Victim of Online Child Predator: 'I Was Tortured, Raped & Brutally Beaten'"Victim of
Online Child Predator: 'I Was Tortured, Raped & Brutally Beaten' N.p., n.d. Web.
24 Feb. 2016.
Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
"Cyber Bullying Statistics - Bullying Statistics." Bullying Statistics. N.p., 07 July 2015.
Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
MTV. Catfished. Jan 21st. Google Images. Feb 28 2016