I’ll say it a million times and I’ll say it a million times again, I hate social experiments. They are often rushed, overdone, and have – on many occasions – provoked the sort of violence that completely defeats the object of the video.
This one, however, is a little different, and is actually very effective. For once.
‘The Dangers Of Social Media’ is a child predator social experiment set up by Coby Persin, a YouTube prankster with a fair few subscribers to his name, and if you need some sort of idea about how well the video did, try almost 10 million views in two days.
That’s because it’s pretty head-on. Coby, posing as a teenage boy on Facebook, adds and begins chatting with various younger girls – with a plan to meet up with them all. And it turns out said plan is actually quite simple, to the surprise of the subjects’ parents, who are also in on the experiment.
In every situation, the respective girls all decide to meet up with Coby, and it doesn’t take him long to convince them. The girls even go to the lengths of waiting for their parents to leave before handing him their address.
And when the moment finally comes, they get a bit of a shock…
It’s a sobering insight into the seedy world of social media and how easy it is to get the attention of not just young girls, but young people in general. With said generation becoming more and more tech savvy, it seems like their naive minds are trailing behind and leaving them open to manipulation.
But, with that said, there is undoubtedly a LOT of kids out there that are alert to these situations, and will never accept a friend request, or talk to a stranger online. Let’s just hope that videos like this one have an effect on the thousands that aren’t aware of the dangers – parents included.
