Photo by Will Lindsey
by | Kayla Petri
Students question who is really behind the screen
by | Charlotte Grush By Lilly Summey
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tarting in 2008 a 14-year-old freshman girl began messaging a young boy on Facebook, and they hit it off. What she didn’t know was that he was not actually who he said he was. Even though all her friends thought he was a fake and warned her repeatedly, the she still fell in love with him. Their online affair lasted throughout all of high school and through two real boyfriends. After graduation, she had a few more real relationships and stopped talking to the “catfisher.” “We all knew he was fake, but she believed that this guy was her age,” freshman guidance counselor Cole Church said. “She continued to contact him online. They never talked on the phone.” Situations like the one described by Church happen frequently with students on social media. The term catfishing is defined by Dictionary.com as a taking a false identity on social-networking websites to deceive, manipulate or swindle. Most catfishers are not predators, just people not comfortable enough with themselves to actually reveal who they really are, according to UKnowKids.com.
16 | feature | wingspan | february 2015
A 15-year-old female student at West whose name was withheld by Church to protect her identity was recently on an adult website where she identified herself as a 21 years old. If she had started a relationship with someone on the site and had met with an individual over 21 years old, it would have been illegal because she was a minor — even if nothing had happened. “That would be a nightmare for a 21 year old. He goes and meets another 21 year old and finds out she’s 15,” Church said. “I guarantee she was not the only girl who has done this.” Although, Catfishing is not always as harmless as this situation. Sex trafficking is a growing problem related to the practice, according to PsychologyToday.com. SharedHope.org defines sex trafficking as harboring, transporting and obtaining a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act where the act is committed by force and fraud. Traffickers will offer young girls the hope of fame and money through a modeling career. The teens that desire these certain things blindly follow the assailant into the trap. In 2013 a famous case of catfishing was aired on nearly every news station in the United States. A Notre Dame football player, Monti Te’o was tricked into a
relationship with a man pretending to be woman. The woman was supposedly suffering from leukemia and died at the end of the hoax. The catfisher was discovered by an online image search for the woman. When investigators talked to the woman who was actually in the picture, she said she had never spoken to the football star. “To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone’s sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating,” Te’o said in an interview with ABC News. According to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, there are four ways to avoid catfishers online: Never give out personal information. Do not tell people if you are going somewhere or where your location is. Never meet up with people you do not know since the catfisher targets you this way so you are out of your comfort zone. And always use privacy settings to make sure you only let friends or relatives to see your profile. “Be aware that the people that you meet online are not always as they appear to be online and they may have another agenda,” science teacher Kathleen Abraham said. “So if you ever go and meet somebody, let an adult know and go with a friend.”