The Social Networking Moral Panic

As with all youth cultures, media pick particular events surrounding them and blow them out of proportion creating mass hysteria and fear, we are now living in what some scholars and journalist refer to as a culture of fear. As discussed in previous posts the term moral panic first came about in the 70’s with Stanley Cohens book ‘Folk devils and moral panics’ where he analyzed the moral panic surrounding the mods and rockers.

In this post i will discuss the moral panic surrounding social network and how the media have instilled fear in the public with regard to the likes of Facebook and Myspace etc. Since the first social network Myspace came about in 2002 the media have been spinning story after story creating fear among the public

You may remember the case in 2009 of Ashleigh Hall in the UK. The 17 year old met up with a man she met on Facebook and was murdered by him. Headlines such as these swarmed the country causing uproar with parents of teenagers using Facebook.

Terms such as Facebook perv, Facebook fiend, Fackbook killer were commonly used.

But awful crimes like this have been happening long before the like of Facebook and Myspace existed. It would be just a easy for a girl to meet a man like this in a pub or club. Although i realise that age is easier to disguise online but i think children just have to be thought and made aware of these dangers.

Talks of banning the sites from teenagers to protect them continue on. But i think that this is the wrong way to deal with the. Teenagers need to be monitored and educated like you would with the same issues ‘offline’ in the real world “dont talk to strangers” etc. Banning it would only drive social networks underground where it will be harder for parents to monitor.

Heres a video of stand up comedian Doug Stanhope on the subject