There are many potential problems with social networking sites and the teenagers that use them. Social networking online involves using Web sites to share information with others and connect with them by creating a profile that may include a personal Web page and a blog.
The growth of social networking platforms has been phenomenal. Millions of people around the world with access to the Internet are members of one or more social networks. They have a permanent online presence where they create profiles, share photos, share their thoughts with friends and spend hours catching up with what their hundreds of friends are doing with their lives.
Social networking sites allow users to add friends, send messages and comment on others' profile pages. But the potential harm to an individual user really boils down to how much a user engages in a social networking site, as well as the amount of information they're willing to share. In other words, the Facebook user with 900 friends and 60 group memberships is a lot more likely to be harmed by a breach than someone who barely uses the site.
The reason social network security and privacy lapses exist results simply from the astronomical amounts of information the sites process each and every day that end up making it that much easier to exploit a single flaw in the system. Features that invite user participation -- messages, invitations, photos, open platform applications, etc. -- are often the avenues used to gain access to private information, especially in the case of Facebook.
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