Aaron
Aaron
Aaron
Table Of Contents
Acknowledgement
This topic has not only helped us to understand how useful social media is
but also how dangerous it can be. This project has allowed us to learn about
the history of social media, various uses, role of social media in the society
and also various crimes that are committed by the people online. We the
group members have tried our level best to gather all the information and
present it in a way that it is easy to understand and beautiful.
I would like thank Mr. Ameen Rasheed, Mr. Aaron Thomas, Mr. Murtaza,
Mr. Rihan Siddiqui for their cooperation and hard work in order to
present this project in front of you within the given time frame.
Objective
Social Media can be defined as a collective term for all the websites,
applications etc that allow the users to interact, communicate, share their
content etc. People use social media to stay in touch with their family,
friends, colleagues and others. It is an interactive technology that can also
be used to promote their business by advertising their products on
platforms such as Instagram, Threads (An application by meta),
Facebook, Twitter etc. It helps
businesses track, measure and
analyze the attention the
company gets from social media,
including brand perception and
customer insight.
1. Instagram
2. YouTube
3. Facebook
4. Twitter
5. TikTok
6. WhatsApp
Billions of people have been using social media since so many years, but
where did it all start? It all started on May 24, 1844, when Samuel Morse,
an American painter and inventor had sent the world’s first electronic
message from Baltimore in the state of Maryland to Washington D.C. in
which he wrote “What hath God wrought?” While the roots of digital
communication run deep, most contemporary accounts of the modern
origins of today’s internet and social media point to the emergence in 1969
of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network — the ARPANET.
BBS, Bulletin
Board System
are one of the
first forms of
social media in
the late 1970’s.
They are hosted
on personal
computers and
are accessible to
one person at a
time. Then we had the Internet Relay Chat which was first introduced in
1988 and it was usually used for link and file sharing between various
users. Later we had one of the world’s first social media platforms, the
Sixdegrees. It was launched in 1997, a year before Google was launched.
In its prime time between 1997 to 2001, it had reached 1 million users
(Users could create profiles, either personal or professional, and also add
friends. However it was shutdown in 2001.
This is a screenshot of the application IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
The use of global social media has increased since past few decades
Another social media network published in 2003 was Hi5. It has a million
users active currently. It is mostly popular in Central Africa, Asia and Latin
America.
Facebook started its history when It was first launched in Harvard in 2004
by Mark Zuckerberg. It quickly spread
to other schools and by the year 2008, it
had already become the most famous
social media platform and it is still
currently used by millions of users. It is
still by far one of the most famous social
media platforms. It allows users to
create an account and post their photos
online, make friends, post videos, interact with their family, friends and
strangers, grow their business by promoting, advertising. It can also be
used for private messaging as well.
MySpace was launched in the year 2004. It was a platform which allowed
users to customize their profiles, embed videos and post music.
As you can see, more than half of the population around the world has
access to social media.
Social media has also allowed people to shop online rather than go to the
stores themselves. Today, people can buy groceries, drugs, electronic
devices etc online. Almost all companies and brands have their own
websites and applications for business and advertising purposes. Shopping
is made easy as it is just one click away.
The rise of influencers around the world for example Andrew Tate has led
to an increase in attraction towards social media amongst the teenagers.
Today, everyone knows who Andrew Tate is even the kids.
There was a time when people were not able to go to courts and ask for
justice. But today, social media has become so powerful that we can easily
create awareness over something by just posting it on social media. For
example, the YNW Melly case, people got information about the case by
just scrolling through social media. The Andrew Tate case where he got
imprisoned unjustly. The Benjamin Mendy case where he was accused of
6 rape accusations but he was recently proven innocent. He was in jail for
over a year. People got to know every bit of information about these cases
but how? Was it by investigating the case themselves? No. Was it by
attending the trial in the court? No. It was just by scrolling on social media
and coming across these cases.
As you can see, it is quite easy to scroll on social media and come across
these things. In short, social media allows u to have freedom of speech and
freedom of opinion and post everything
and anything as long as it does not
violate the policy of the particular
platform where you’re posting it
These are not the only cases that you can find
on social media. The events that are
happening all over the world are easy to find
on social media. For example if you open
twitter.com, and click on explore, you will
find the hottest or the most trending topic of
the day.
Since the beginning, we’ve been discussing about what social media is, the
history of social media and the role of social media in society. But
obviously, as social media allows everyone and anyone to use these
platforms, misuse of social media and these platforms is bound to happen.
Just like how a knife can be used to cut meat, vegetables and also for
inhuman activities.
These are a few examples of how a scammer can trick you into giving your
personal information to him so he can either steal your money or commit
any other crime:
As you can see in the above images, these fraud SMS’s sent by the
scammers are trying to trick me into clicking on the link and giving my
details to them so that they can scam me.
1. Guard your online information: Make sure you do not give your
personal information to anyone. Avoid entering your personal details
on a public computer. Make sure you do not message anyone about
your bank card details or passwords etc.
2. Monitor your accounts: Make sure you monitor your accounts all
over the internet regularly. Try not to keep your account passwords
same on all platforms. Use different set of characters when making a
password. Use https://www.passwordmonster.com/ to ensure that
your password is strong or not.
6. Random Links: If ever you receive any links from a random person,
never click on them as just by a click, all your account details could be
snatched by the scammer.
Social Media – A Sophisticated Means of
Stalking
Now that we are aware of what social media is, its history, its role in the
society, it is clear that social media allows billions of human beings around
the world to communicate and interact with each other. But in page 13, we
read that social media has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the
most dangerous crimes online over social media is scamming as we
discussed. But social media can also be used to commit crimes such as
murder, theft, rape, stalking etc.
Californian police had arrested a 21 year old man on September 2019 after
he allegedly broke into the bedroom of an innocent 13 year old girl. He had
discovered her location by stalking her Instagram posts and other social
media sites.
On April 2018, the police in Florida revealed to the public about the case of
a Pennsylvanian man who for several years, had trawled social media for
young girls to stalk online. He came across a 12 year old girl and then 7
years later, he sent a love letter to her home address.
1. Try Googling yourself to find out what information a stalker could find
about you online. If you feel like you have too much of personal information
online, remove it immediately.
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/social-media
https://www.future-marketing.co.uk/the-history-of-social-media/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F
%2Fwww.smartinsights.com%2Fsocial-media-marketing%2Fsocial-
media-strategy%2Fnew-global-social-media-research
%2F&psig=AOvVaw0EQccY6oLxkD-
p80zli5ow&ust=1690135135764000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978
449&ved=0CA4QjhxqFwoTCKizqZzyooADFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI
https://www.voicesofyouth.org/blog/two-sides-free-speech-social-media
https://www.rocklandtrust.com/learning-center/business-resources/8-
ways-to-protect-yourself-from-fraud
https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2019/10/11/social-media-
proves-itself-to-be-the-perfect-tool-for-stalkers/?sh=242ebd193d79