We have a social network for the mobile platform that is run from South Africa (called MXIT – mxit.co.za). This has become a plague on this network. To the extent where we had an incident of a father chatting up his own daughter on the network and only when they agreed to meet did he discover that his “chat buddy” was his own flesh an blood. Another incident involves a young girl whose parents found her at a bus station, ready to board a bus to travel thousands on kilometers to hook up with a guy she met on the network, who had deposited money into her account for the bus ticket. She had no idea who he was or where he came from. All she had to go by was what he divulged on the network.

These are just some of the negative outcomes of the subject matter of youth online discussions.