Dani Garavelli: Virtual witchhunt

Published on Saturday 13 March 2010 19:32

I AM not a big fan of Facebook. On the one day I dabbled with it – at the urging of a colleague who mocked my lack of technological prowess – I found myself sucked into a world way beyond my comprehension.

Reading the random thoughts of people I barely knew made me feel as if I was eavesdropping, while the idea of compiling an long list of "friends", comprised of passing acquaintances who might prove useful in the future, seemed both cynical and a trifle desperate.

I haven't used it since. But far from feeling like a lofty upholder of traditional values, I sense I am someone cast adrift in the wrong century; like those early opponents of the motor car who couldn't see why you'd ever want to travel at more than four miles an hour.

Clearly Facebook is a useful tool for millions of people: it helps teenagers create vibrant social circles, and business people network and keep abreast of the latest developments; it helps keep far-flung family in touch, and the elderly from becoming isolated.

Indeed, so integral is the worldwide web in general to daily life that a recent survey showed at least four out of five people in the world believe internet access is a human right. Seen by some as much of a marker of a civilised society as clean water, well-maintained roads and decent schooling, we are getting to the stage where anyone unable to connect will be disadvantaged to the point of being disenfranchised.

Yet despite this, the internet is constantly being blamed for tragedies which are entirely human in their making. Last week it was the murder of Ashleigh Hall. As Peter Chapman was convicted of killing the youngster after posing as a 19-year-old, "befriending" her on Facebook, and persuading her to meet up in the real world, a tidal wave of anger was unleashed against the social networking site for failing to stop the paedophile entering false information.

Undoubtedly Ashleigh's death was a terrible tragedy, but it occurred, not because she liked to chat online, but because today – as throughout history – there are men who prey on young girls (and boys); men willing to lie and exploit the tools they have at their disposal to get what they want.

Where once they might have hung around parks, offering bribes, such as cigarettes, alcohol or drugs to lure in potential victims, they now have the option of making contact online. But to blame Facebook for this is as logical as blaming telephones for the existence of abusive callers or vans with windowless doors for the abduction and murder of Sarah Payne.

The same goes for the hounding of the man mistaken for Jon Venables. David Calvert found himself under attack from a virtual lynch mob after his revelation he had once served time led some people to believe he was James Bulger's killer, and to post the claim online.

Within days, 2,500 people had joined a Facebook group calling for him to be killed, despite being presented with categoric evidence of his innocence.

This is an intolerable situation, and, of course, those responsible for inciting violence in any forum should be punished. But the idea that the kind of hysteria that was whipped up around this man is a new phenomenon born of Facebook and other social networking sites is demonstrably wrong.

From Salem to the McCarthy witchhunts, to the women who, confusing the words paedophile with the word paediatrician, daubed paint on the home of a trainee paediatrician in South Wales in 2000, human beings seemed predisposed to frenzy. The internet allows the contagion to spread more quickly, but it is no way responsible for its existence.

It is everybody's duty to ensure technology – from fax machines to mobile telephones to social networking sites – is not abused, and those who run social networking sites must play their part. The difficulty for site-operators and the police, however, is that it's all so new: proper protocols for online behaviour have yet to be established and more sophisticated means of monitoring online use need to be developed.

Some progress is already being made on this score: in the wake of Chapman's sentencing, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the government was looking at ways to alert authorities when convicted sex offenders were online.

But technology will not solve everything. Police suggestions that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) unit panic button, which – unlike Bebo and MSN – Facebook has refused to display, would have made a difference to Ashleigh are both dangerous and misleading; misleading because, as she was not suspicious of her online "friend", she would have had no reason to press it, and dangerous because it suggests such buttons are an alternative to scrutinising your children's online use or teaching them to assess risk for themselves.

For our part, we need to be more savvy in our internet use. Just as when I was young, girls were taught to walk purposefully, keep to busy, well-lit roads, and carry a rape alarm, today's young people have to learn to protect themselves. That means not joining Facebook under age, no posting photographs of themselves semi-clad and the use of the toughest privacy settings.

Of course, there will still be times when it all goes wrong. Even teenagers who have been warned repeatedly of the dangers sometimes take risks: they drive too fast, leave their friends in the early hours, take drugs at a party or hook up with someone they "met" online.

Occasionally they pay the ultimate price. That is very much to be regretted. But to blame such tragedies on social networking sites is an exercise in anger displacement which absolves users for taking responsibility for themselves. Facebook is a useful tool, but, like all tools worth owning, it is potentially dangerous and needs to be handled with care.