People spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook (20 Stunning Social Media Statistics Plus Infographic). Social networking sites account for 17% of all the time on the internet.( 52 Cool Facts About Social Media) Social networking sites have a tendency to keep people online for hours and as a result they spend less time interacting with people face-to-face. All the time spent online has some severe consequences. One such consequence would be children being abused mentally due to an issue called cyber bullying. Another result of the tedious amount of time online is sexual predators.
Social networking sites have many registered sex offenders masquerading as other people. In Feb. 2009, MySpace identified 90,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the site, while Facebook declined to reveal how many were present on its site (Social Networking ProCon). Many people will “add” others on these sites without knowing anything about that person. How does a person know that who they accepted a friend request from is really who they say they are, and not a pervert hiding behind a picture? In California a bill was proposed to prevent any sexual offenders from having social accounts online.( Social Networking Sites: Too Much Information) Even if these sites agreed to remove sexual offenders from their databases they would have no way to stop them from creating new accounts. It may seem easier to trust a person who treats you nice online;