Calif. says Facebook will remove inmates' pages

SFGate.com ^ | 8/8/11 | Don Thompson - ap

[NormsRevenge]

Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- Facebook has agreed to work with law enforcement agencies nationwide to remove accounts set up by inmates or posted on their behalf, in part because prisoners are using the social networking site to stalk victims and direct criminal activity, California prison officials said Monday.

It's the latest effort to combat a problem that has grown with the advent of smart phones and social networking sites.

Last year a convicted child molester used a cell phone smuggled into prison to search his victim's Facebook and MySpace web pages, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in announcing the agreement with Facebook. The inmate then sent sketches to the 17-year-old victim's home.

[NormsRevenge]

Coincidentally, the Congre$$ is doing away with the Congressional Page program.

With all today’s new technologies, it makes sense per the House leaders.. and will save a few young folk from some of the leches in Congre$$ to boot.. unless they tweet or frequent social networking sites.

[NormsRevenge]

Facebook has psychological consequences for teens, study finds

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/hottopics/detail?entry_id=94945&tsp=1

By Kelsey Williams, SFGate.com

Since the rise of social media, parents have been concerned with what exactly their kids are doing online. But now, Mashable reports, a study out of California State University Dominguez Hills, suggests it is not what the kids are doing on Facebook, but what Facebook is doing to them psychologically that is a real issue.

Narcissism, aggressive tendencies, lower school performance, anxiety and depression were all cited as side effects in teens who use Facebook on a regular basis.

For the study, Dr. Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at CSU-Dominguez Hills, observed 300 teens while studying with access to social media and collected findings from 1,000 surveys distributed to urban teenagers.

Rosen shared his findings in his presentation, “Poke Me. How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids” at the 119th annual American Psychological Association convention last weekend in Washington.

Although negatives seemed to outweigh the positives, Rosen also noted some good outcomes of social media use, including heightened actual empathy from those exhibiting “virtual empathy” online.

He also mentioned that socially inhibited teens were able to become less introverted as they used Facebook to learn to “socialize behind the safety of various screens.”

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