The Internet, Social Media and Smartphones

Abstract

This chapter analyzes fears about the Internet, social media and smart phones. In the mid-1990s, as families began using the Internet and acquired their first email addresses, the greatest fear among parents about the Internet concerned pornography, often called “cyberporn.” In the new millennium, this fear gradually shifted to a panic over predators who might use chat rooms or new social media such as MySpace to lure young people to meet for sexual encounters. Those fears were then replaced with anxiety over cyberbullying, as several teen and pre-teen suicides were widely publicized. Today’s “moral panic” over social media and smartphones has shifted to discussions about smartphone addiction and depression, both of which are now regularly discussed on television and in books and periodicals.