Technology; Bringing victims and  offenders closer
With social media growing in prominence, and sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter  encouraging us to post every detail of our lives for our “friends” or the general public to see, our  privacy is dwindling and cyber stalking and harassment is on the rise. “Young adults, those 18-29,  are more likely than any other demographic group to experience online harassment. Fully 65% of  young internet users have been the target of at least one of the six elements of harassment that  were queried in the survey. Among those 18-24, the proportion is 70% (Duggan & Duggan, 2015).  One feature of all of these sites is some sort of Direct Messaging (DM) feature where you can  communicate directly with someone privately, as opposed to writing on their wall or commenting  on a photo; both options are visible to anyone that visits their profile. Any user has the ability to  send unwanted messages or images to any user that doesn’t have their profile set to private, and  while it is a positive that there is a safety option to disallow DM’s from people you don’t interact  with, it isn’t always a viable option to people that are public figures or “influencers” as the term  seems to be now. While the existence of a private messaging system isn’t inherently negative, it  provides an easy access point for people who wish to engage in cyber harassment in addition to  any stalking they may do privately with no contact initiated.  There is no verification on these sites  to prove who you say you are, short of confirming an email address, something easily  circumvented with sites like 5 minute mail among others that offer quick and disposable email  addresses. There is no limit to how many accounts you own, only how much time you’re willing to  spend making them, and this is taken advantage of by people with ill will; blocking someone  malicious is no longer effective, they can make a new account and be back up and running in  under ten minutes with no cost incurred but time spent. Given the ease of making accounts, it  should be apparent that stronger protections should be standard in terms of DM’ing a user; I  would say that being mutual “followers” should be a minimum requirement for messaging, but something should be done that allows a victim to separate themselves from contact from a  harasser.
References
Duggan, M., & Duggan, M. (2015, September 21). Online Harassment. Retrieved from https://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/