The Dark Side Of Social Media

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Social media is a craze that has spread quickly and has millions of people that access them daily. Social media includes popular websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. Social media allows people to interact with other people by creating a personalized profile. The personalized profile has a lot of personal information on it that is easily accessed by anyone that is befriended on the website or if the profile is public. Another feature of these social media websites is that other people can openly access and view your profiles content. These contents can be a person’s home address, where they work and a lot of other personal information. A dark side to the social media explosion is the rise of what could be defined as illegal activity. On these social media websites there are multiple examples of bullying, racial slurs, and threats taken in the form of instant messages or posting on the person’s profile. Can the information that is found can be used against someone in a criminal court of law? If the information can be gathered what is the process of …show more content…

Is an action that is illegal in real life a punishable offense if it occurs over the internet? According to Current Developments In states such as Pennsylvania and Florida threats and harassment are considered to be unlawful and punishable in a court of law. A threat, according to Dictionary.com is a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done. When a person purposely uses social media to verbally threaten someone that is a felony in Florida. In the case O’Leary V. State 2013, Timothy Ryan O’Leary was charged with a felony because of a Florida statute that makes it illegal to send any sort of communication that threatens serious bodily harm or that threatens death (Snyder,

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