You never know who's on the other end

With the internet, going online affords persons a higher degree of anonymity. Such that, a 50-year old man can pretend to be a 13-year old boy or a 12-year old girl can pretend to be 20-year old woman. The reasons for creating these fake profiles or personas are myriad. Some tend to do it to avoid rejection, live out a fantasy or escape their reality. A serious danger with this is that people tend to be far less emphatic online than in real life. Not to mention, it’s extremely risky meeting someone you met online in real life. 

These fake profiles are very common in the dating scene where persons portray themselves as someone they’re not, by posting false information, such as, a fake profile pic, school, workplace, hobbies etc. This is usually done to attract others or a certain individual they’re interested in. The term, catfishing, was coined to describe this practice.

Having said all that, privacy is very important for our welfare. We need robust boundaries that protect us, but at the same time, allow us to form healthy bonds to others. This is vital to our psychological and emotional health. The issues lie in trying to determine what a healthy boundary is. This is what is believed to be at the heart of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal. Though, general wisdom would be to respect the privacy of others.

Microsoft has a really good place to start learning about general online safety and privacy.

So, do you pretend to be someone you’re not online? Have you ever catfish anyone?