To like or not to like- The other side of Facebook

Mercy Bofu Lifestyle Writer
Social networks have become a junction where people from all walks of life interact and be whoever they want to be. By updating one’s profile, a married person can become single overnight. An unemployed man can turn into an executive of a company and have photos behind a desk to back it up.

In fact, through social media, a person can be anyone. It is the cheapest method of living double or even multiple lives as one can have more than one Facebook account depending on the kind of personality they wish to portray.

The increase of social networks has lured people into delinquent behaviour such as cybersex, satanism and propagating fabricated information through these social platforms.

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, Myspace and others allow anyone to use pseudo names like prominent people’s names, non-existent names to    create pages and platforms where they can communicate anonymously without being traced.

Mostly people are now living double standard lives, where they claim to be rich, famous and ambitious yet on actual fact they are ordinary people.

Fake profiles
People have been fooled by these fake social network friends as they upload fake profile    pictures, photos, pretending to be nice and friendly.

This social networking has come as an advantage to cyber-criminals also known as online perverts as they are taking advantage of ignorant users, to commit crimes.

People are becoming victims particularly the younger generation as they are in danger of detaching themselves from a world of real experience to a world of imagination and fantasies.

Tariro Chinengwa (25) is a self-confessed WhatsApp addict who spends hours each day chatting with “friends” around the globe, some of then total strangers.

She is a reflection to many people of different age groups that have made social networking a major part of their lifestyles.
Teen relationships are now normal exploring it all on those social network sites by sexting half-naked or nude pictures with unknown people who end up abusing them, raping them and dragging them into danger.

At the same time what amazes is that at the end of the relationship those private pictures, messages and videos are posted publicly to bring humiliation and indignity to the ex- lover.

Many cases are being reported of people involved on social networks scandals even married people indulging in double dates.
H-metro of August 19 had a story headlined “Wife bashed over Facebook messages”, it shows that social networks are even fuelling infidelity in marriages.

Clincton Dale Matambo, the founder of Empowering Solutions and Joint Action (ESAJA.Com), a communication company in Harare said people are now interconnected in all corners of the world.

Billions of individuals worldwide have resorted to using social networks despite the security scare.
“Social networks allow us to communicate, even for business purposes and discussions. However, with the high rate of unemployment in the country the people are affected especially the young generation.

“People are struggling for self-actualisation so they end up spending a lot of time doing unproductive business on those social networks, such as online dating which results in getting raped or being used for rituals,” said Matambo.

Tonderai Rutsito, an editor of a technology news magazine, TechnoMag, said the major problem is the nature of social networks that anyone can set any identity and is untraceable and mostly perpetrators are male.

“Actually it’s a game of games with people pretending to be what they are not and it’s now all about followership people actually creating pages with targeted market,” he said.

Identity Theft
He went on to say many pages were being opened on social networks through identity theft and cybercrime to damage the reputation of individuals and account thefts.

“If you check on Facebook or Whatssup there are pages like Masasi, Let’s Talk with Aunt Rose and many others which are untraceable.”
The intriguing part is that people voluntarily associate themselves with this new technology.

They accept friend requests from strangers, liking pages they do not know or understand digging their own graves.
However, people should try and ensure that they do not like pages they do not understand and accepting friend requests from strangers.

The growing use social networks has created the challenge to build trust, confidence, reliability, and privacy on them since anyone can engage in  misinformation and, worse still,  the accounts can be hacked.

The gadget is in your hands at the end of the day.
You are its master and whatever you decide to do with it depends entirely with you.