Victimization Identity on Social Media

By: St. Fatimah Dzikra Khalishah, XI B

In this era, people can not escape from using social media. People should understand the
features provided by social media platforms. There are many several benefits of playing
social media, if we can use it correctly we can get the positive effect. Aside from several
benefits of playing social media, social media can be crime place to occur. One of the most
common criminal acts on social media is using fake identities. This term is known as
catfishing.
Catfishing or also known as identity fraud is rife on social media due to technological
convenience. The faker usually use a fake identity or fake background that they steal from
other people or they make it by their self to make the victim believe them. In this case, it can
harm the victim. If the victim believed to the faker, the faker begin their criminal action.
The use of fake identities or known as catfishing is common because the person have a
mental disorders, due to loss of self confidence, person who have personal revenge, person
who want to extort money, sexual crime offender, people who just want to do it for fun and
also they can do cyberbullying. Those person who experience that, sometimes do catfishing
in order to communicate with people effectively. It’s very detrimental the victim.
There is several characteristic of catfishing. Such as if we ask for their profil, they won’t give
us and send a fake identity or send other person photo. They ask for money, someone you’ve
never met asking for money through social media is suspicious. Usually they do it in a pitiful
way, so that the victim feel pity to them. The faker is too perfect to be real, they always make
fake story about their background in the perfect way. It makes them feel look interesting. If
communication often occur, they tend to ghosting or lying and hide the true identities. From
psychological point of view, this known as identity confusion.
Avoid from catfishing is not easy, but there are ways to avoid it. Always be careful to person
we just met. Do not be easy to believed and do not worry to ask for help to closest person. Do
not tell something about privacy or secret, we can protect our account by change it into
private account to avoid catfishing.
Internet freedom allows anyone to create their own identity, so that anyone can be any
character they want on social media or online. Sadly, this technology is used for several
scam. Catfishing is become a major risk factor for social media users. 65% of total 18.000
respondent in 27 country, including Indonesia. They give expression of their worry of playing
social media. Catfishing have a negative impact on the victim in terms of psychologically.
After the incident, usually the victim will show their trauma by showing symptoms of not
easy to trust other people. Moreover, they may also avoid contact with anyone so that they
not want to be exposed to the public.