A 13-year-old North Carolina resident, Nicole Lovell, was stabbed to death after connecting with an 18-year-old Virginia Tech student on the app Kik.
Lovell’s body was found three days after she snuck out of her home on Jan. 27 to meet with David Eisenhauer, who her friends said Lovell referred to as her boyfriend, reported AP. To many, this event re-affirms the ever-present dangers of social media.
Kik is a messaging app comparable to Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. According to USA Today’s Ju’Riese Colon, executive for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, it doesn’t matter which app it was.
“It’s not about the latest app. Because it’s not the app that’s dangerous. It’s the decisions, the actions they’re taking on these apps that are dangerous,” said Colon. “It’s not about teaching kids not to use a specific app. It’s about teaching them not to give this kind of information out.”
Although social media is revolutionizing communication, especially for college and teenage students, the dangers are real as younger people are using the apps.
Terri-Lee Bixby, a junior studying history from New York, said she once counseled a friend using the app that because anyone has access to it, “serial killers could be watching you.”
Bixby counseled, “Have some common sense and don’t have one, just uninstall it, or if you want to keep it, just be warned that random people from across the world can watch it and you know just be careful.”
Another student, Sammy Daynes said her sister has the app. “She’s 15, so she spends like all her time on it and like totally is just trusting and she’ll post whatever she wants.”
Daynes cautioned, “People can see that, so be careful about what you post because you never know who will see it.”