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A young boy, still not mature enough to be fully self-aware, sits behind his computer screen flirting with the idea that he’ll be able to find himself by talking with strangers in an online world, a world so unfamiliar than the one he’s been forced to live in by his parents. In his home life, he was never allowed to talk about his sexual feelings because they were not accepted as normal in his community, his church, and household. But with this new freedom, he was able to show his true colors and explore the possibilities and experiences that he’d been missing out on.
As he stretches his fingertips to the keyboard and signs into a chatroom, a message pops up. “Hi, my name’s dave. What’s yours?” Strangely excited by this interaction with this stranger, he types back. The boy and Dave start to have a conversation, but the conversation soon gets serious and quickly turns onto adult issues. The boy, struggling with his sexuality finds comfort in talking to this man about his sexuality, like he’s the only one who would understand what he’s going through. The time passes in what seems like minutes, but it’s really been 4 hours.
The boy signs off, but as soon as he gets a chance the next day he logs on. Dave’s there waiting for him, like he knew he was going to be there. Dave and the boy talked for 3 days straight about sexual things the boy would not be able to talk about with his friends and family. The two decide to meet. But the sad part of the story is that Dave just didn’t find an interest in just this one boy, he was a serial online predator, waiting for his next victim to come along.
Stories like this happen everyday. But what makes teens and adolescents, who know about the dangers of online sexual predators, decide to talk to and confide in strangers online and how are teens using the Internet to talk to these people.