Graphic by Kimmie Johnasen
By Will Gaffey
It was happening again.
With his pulse racing, sweat beading on his forehead and a nauseous sensation rising in his stomach, junior Bobby Behrens felt alarm wash over him as he checked his Instagram and discovered yet another disturbing message from an unknown person that had been harassing him and his friend group via social media for the past seven months.
“For the first month or two, we genuinely did not know how to deal with it,” he said. “[We didn’t know] if this was a younger kid picking on older kids just for fun or a full-on serious situation that needed to be dealt with.”
In February of 2021, Behrens and his friends were introduced to the would-be harasser and began a friendship. By June, however, things took a dark turn when Behrens and his friends became the victims of constant online harassment by their former friend. The harasser would go as far as creating blank Instagram accounts to get in touch with Behrens and sending him links to photos of his mom, asking how she was doing.
“I felt violated,” he said.
He credits the lack of privacy on social media as to what made it so easy for the harasser to obtain his personal information. Over the past decade, the amount of personal information that users put on public display via social media has increased drastically.
Nearly 100% of Americans believe that people have lost control over how personal information is collected and used, according to a study called “Privacy and Information Sharing” Director of Internet, Science, and Technology Research at Pew Research Center Lee Rainie and Dana Page, the senior communications manager at Pew Research Center.
Behrens agrees and thinks that social media has essentially stripped people of their privacy.
“It's sort of abnormal how far we've gone today,” Behrens said. “We basically have no privacy anymore. I mean, if you have a phone on your person, which most people always do, then you're almost always being tracked.”
Snapchat, a popular social media app among teens, is often cited as having a major lack of privacy as a result of its Snap Map, which, if turned on, actively exposes your location to anyone who you’ve added. However, Snap Map is an optional feature that can be turned off with the click of a button.
"It's sort of abnormal how far we've gone. We basically have no privacy anymore."
“I don’t want everyone to know where I am all the time, [and] there should be boundaries,” sophomore Henry Bales said. “It really has become a social norm, though, and that's why people do it without thinking.”
In Behrens’ case, his harasser was able to learn the addresses of him and his friends through Snap Map and would taunt them with this information. Since the incident, Behrens has been adamant about keeping his location off on Snapchat.
“I haven’t turned on Snap Map since June 2021,” he said. “Not even for close friends.”
For most situations like this, Chief of Police Mark Rowden says one should always consider reporting the case to the police department. However, Behrens chose not to do so because he didn’t think he would get immediate help.
“I think it would’ve been a much longer process because they have paperwork and their own regulations to adhere to,” Behrens said.
Rowden acknowledges that as human beings, it’s hard for us to admit that we are victims, though he also states that failing to speak out doesn’t reduce the damage dealt to the victim. He pleads that at the least, those who are being stalked or harassed try to reach out to family and friends.
“I always recommend that kids communicate with their parents,” Rowden said. “Your parents are there to protect you, [and] they're going to help guide you in those situations so that bad things don't happen.”
Behrens was able to end the incident after he pretended to email the harraser’s school about what was happening and CC’d the harraser’s mom on the email. However, even after everything was over, the impact on Behren's well being remained.
“I get a little more suspicious than the average person because of this,” he said. “When I see my friends being careless with their information I sort of wonder, ‘Are they being safe?’ ‘Is something going to happen [to them] like it happened to me?’”
This isn’t a unique situation either. The National Center for Biotechnology Information describes stalking as having the potential to be traumatic, even going as far as to note the possible development of depressive disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Bales has noticed that because of the threat online stalking can pose, education systems have been more adamant about the dangers of social media.
“They tell us to be careful not to say our name or put our information out there on the internet, and usually I agree with it,” he said. “[But] at some point, you’ve got to [put your information out there], you just have to be careful about how you go about it and to what extent it’s being done.”
"Social media should be about connecting with others as an alternative to texts or sharing photos, [however] we put way too much of our personal lives on social media."
The government has also attempted to address this issue through the Texas Electronic Communications Act of 2001 and David’s Law, granting both law enforcement and schools the authority to take action against cyberstalkers.
Despite these changes, Rowden believes the issue at hand is difficult to solve because of how simple it is for people to harm others through social media.
“People think this is a tool to be able to [harass others] because it's quick and easy,” Rowden said. “It's a whole lot easier for me to feel ok with that if I don't have to be there staring you in the face, looking you in the eye. Phones and social media allow that.”
Regardless of the threat, there are ways to protect yourself from this issue. Rowden recommends remaining aware of the dangers of social media and learning how to act more reserved with what you choose to post to reduce the likelihood of becoming a target.
As for Behrens, although the incident was distressing, it was a learning experience that helped him to realize nothing on the internet is truly private.
“Social media should be about connecting with others as an alternative to texts or sharing photos,” he said. “We put way too much of our personal lives on social media. If we just [control] that a bit, it will be a lot easier to avoid situations like this in the future.”