STRANGER-gram

Stranger-Gram

 

How does a stranger online coax a teenager into beginning a friendship or relationship?

 

Many responses to this question will vary. Majority of you will claim that you've never spoken to a stranger online. Others might claim that you were the stranger texting another teen. But teens interacting with strangers happens every day without us realizing. The photo you liked recently from a meme account, the quote you saw on google etc. But are they safe?

 

Majority of the people who use the internet are happy to hide behind a screen and act like anybody they want to act like. Us humans trust the internet and the strangers online no matter what. We have this trait inside of us called the “True Self” trait which comes out while we are online and chatting to others. When this trait comes out, we automatically begin to trust the type of media we are using which we believe isn't being watched carefully by any organisations (or our parents). But how else do Google ads perfectly target audiences and gain lots of money through these advertisements?

Whatever interest we search up on the internet will be assigned to the account we are using and tracked continuously. Strangers on the internet (if they wish to speak with a younger person) will use the same method by searching up a keyword e.g Rock Music on Instagram, click on the account and look through the follower list until they find a teenager or a fan account relating to this. Sometimes the teen will hunt down the stranger's account and add them randomly, wishing to find people that relate to them.

Strangers will try to hunt down teens with very simple interests like rock music or horses. 

Imagine this scenario:

A girl (or boy or gender fluid) decides to make an Instagram account. They really like Youtubers, so they begin to follow these Youtuber accounts online. While searching up the Youtuber accounts on Instagram, they find a fan account. This fan account owns so many pictures and videos relating to them. The fan account then begins to message them. "Hey thanks for liking my message!" or "Hi, do you think this post would be good?".

This is an example of someone adding a random stranger who has the same interest as them and begins to message them. This happens every day (except the person doesn't usually begin to talk to them, usually we begin to talk to them.) Even I admit that I've followed multiple accounts that have content which I find very cool. AND messaged them, wishing to find out more about them because they seem so cool.

But sometimes, they aren't exactly the splitting image of who we believed they'd be. Some of the accounts created on apps like Instagram are spam accounts to support an artist or to scam people into believing they have loads of followers on this app. Others are real life strangers who are hunting down teens to form a relationship with.

Research shows that more conversations between strangers online end better by 15% compared to normal conversations in real life. Strangers, can use this “true self” trait when talking to teenagers and use whatever information they gain to start more conversations with the teen. The teenager who believes they’ve found someone who relates to them or understands them on a personal level will begin to open more and try to form a relationship with the stranger even more.

 

I interviewed 100 girls at my high school and ended up with these stats:

 

66% of students at a school use social media

78% of people wouldn’t add a stranger – but 21% would.

31% of people would message back a stranger who was messaging them

Absolutely NOBODY would try to meet the person in real life – but 20% might, they mainly said they would if they “Meet at a very public place where people are.” But others know about the dangers when meeting strangers – do you?

 3% of students would act like somebody else to have a friendship because "I do it every day: I don't know who I am, the self does not exist, we project an image of a different person to every single person we meet.” While 97% of people find it very creepy and believe that is not how you begin a true friendship.

22% of students have been cat fished. Only 10% knew of the person and knew that it was a prank, but the other 13% either never found out who the catfish was, or eventually found out but didn't want to talk about the experience.

Out of these facts, one really stood out for me - How 20% of students WOULD MAYBE meet a stranger if they met in a public place with people around. Overall, this is worrying that they would even consider meeting a stranger in the first place because they don't truly know the person. The main message I must send out to anybody who reads this is to watch out - only add your friends who you truly know and if you do want to meet up with somebody, meet in a safe place where either your friends or family members will see you both meet up. Just be very careful with what you search up on the internet and what messages you leave online. 

Your digital footprint can't be erased.

 

The Interweb Usage - In real time! Check this out to see what's going on every second on media!