Catfishing Is Bad

1255 Words3 Pages

Technology is changing the world and is affecting us in ways we would never of imagined. Technology is a gateway to another world, which can be a very dangerous world. Cyberbullying is making it’s way into the younger generations with it enabling people to say things to people they feel superior too, affecting people in emotional, psychological and sometimes physical ways. Catfishing is becoming more apparent with millions of people each year are falling into the catfishing trap. Children are not developing proper social skills, their dependance on technology is making it harder for them to interact with other children and adults. These are all dangerous effects that technology has had on today’s world. These are all becoming more common …show more content…

Catfishing is not unusual to find and hear about in today’s society, a ‘catfish’ is someone that pretends to be someone that they are not by creating a fake online persona. People who catfish are usually men between the ages of 19-60 years old, according to Professor Mary Leal the people they target are often females, who have been either divorced or widowed and have inherited a large inheritance of money. Often their main goal is to exploit the people they are talking too, whether that be by asking for money, images and or videos. Many times the people that are being targeted are unaware of who they are talking to; they believe the online persona that has been created is real. More often than not the people that fall victim to being catfished are the people that use online dating websites. Phsycologytoday.com says “30% of teen girls admitted that they met up with a stranger in person after initially meeting them online” although this seems very dangerous, many teenagers will not think this as they feel like they know the person they are meeting up with. On few occasions, the person they are meeting up with is not who they say they are and the girls are put in dangerous positions. Some of the dangerous positions include abduction, assault, rape and murder although these are worst case scenarios they still occur more than people think. New Zealand has the third highest sexual assault rate with 16.2% of women over the age of 15 experiencing a form of sexual assault. The most common form of catfishing is called the “419 scammers” often these scammers work in groups, sharing ideas, poems, identities and the victim. With these scammers working in groups, it makes it almost impossible to track them down because there is more that one identity to be found. The 419 scammers will normally take the identity of a prince or a barrister asking for help to get out

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