The Scariest Part
I first got social media when I was about 13. I wasn’t very smart about using it, so I was always talking to these random people that I didn’t know. One day, some guy who claimed to be from my school sent me a message and we started talking. Being 13 and naive, I talked to him for days and developed a “crush” on him.
He asked me if I wanted to meet up to “hang out” and we even planned a specific time and place to do so. But as the time approached, I became a little skeptical. I made the smart choice to ask my older sister, who was the age the guy claimed to be, if she knew him. She didn’t, which was a red flag to me, since the school is small and it’s impossible to not know someone there.
I decided not to meet the guy, and I blocked him on social media too. I was creeped out that he had obviously been lying to me. The scariest part? About three years later, I saw a news article with that guy’s name. Turns out he didn’t lie about that, or the fact that he was from my town. But he was really 25 years old.
Why was he in the news? He was convicted of assaulting three young girls who he’d lured to his house through social media.