[Social media is a young form of communication that will take time
for some people to adjust to, she said. In the meantime, Rutledge, the
Massachusetts researcher, notes one upside of when awkward online behavior and
crime mix.]
By
Doug Gross
 |
| Derek Medina, right, posted a picture of his slain wife's body to Facebook and then turned himself in for her murder |
[CNN] -- Committing such heinous crimes as sex
abuse and murder are unthinkable enough to most of us. But it's almost equally
mind-boggling that the perpetrators would then confess, or even brag about,
such acts on the Internet.
Even so, in cases as mundane as vandalism or as horrifying as gang
rape, accused criminals are exemplifying a growing truth of the social-media
age: To some, nothing is too
sacred, private or damning to share online.
"Social media exposes the crimes, along with the poster's
need to feel important or powerful," said Pamela Rutledge, director of the
Media Psychology Research Center at
the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. "However, in most
cases, it appears that the need for bravado is much greater than any concerns
about getting caught."
The latest high-profile instance happened Thursday, when a Florida
man allegedly killed his wife and posted a photograph
of her body, along with a confession, on his Facebook page.
"Im going to prison or death sentence for killing my
wife," wrote Derek Medina, 31, of South Miami. "(L)ove you guys miss
you guys take care Facebook people you will see me in the news."
It shocked his own Friends list. Among the responses:
"WHAT??????" "What happened???? derek."
But social-media posts about crimes are surprisingly common. Just
a few of the most widely publicized in recent times:
-- An investigation into the rape of an
unconscious 16-year-old girl by high school football players in Steubenville,
Ohio, began after some of the accused posted pictures and video of
the girl on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
-- The alleged 2011 rape of Rehtaeh Parsons, then 15, in Novia
Scotia by four teens was discovered after the teens reportedly shared a photo
of her online and via text messages. Two of them, now adults, were charged with
child pornography this week. Parsons, at age 17, hanged herself and, in April,
was taken off life support.
-- In 2011, a Pennsylvania teen pleaded guilty to raping an
intoxicated 15-year-old girl, then turned to Facebook, looking for a hit man to kill her. "
"I got 500 on a girls head who wants that bread?" he wrote. "Hit
me up anyway possible." The man who responded was, in fact, an undercover
detective.
-- A Hawaii man was charged after posting a video
titled "Let's Go Driving & Drinking!" in which he
appears to open and drink a beer while driving and talking to a camera for more
than five minutes.
Michele Nealon-Woods, national president of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, notes that
criminals were publicly confessing or boasting of their crimes long before
anyone heard of Mark Zuckerberg and tweeting was something done by birds, not
humans.
In 1888, the notorious "Jack the Ripper" is believed to
have sent at least three letters to London police, taunting them
and telling them when he planned to kill again.
In northern California, the so-called Zodiac Killer did much the same
nearly a century later. He sent dozens of letters to police and the media in
the late 1960s and early '70s -- some of them cryptic puzzles that have never
been solved.
Throw in timeless tales of jailhouse confessions and barroom
braggarts and it's clear that the base instinct here is nothing new.
"The new part of it now, though, is that when people did very
dangerous, aggressive bad things to other people in the past, they didn't have
the medium with which they could share the information," Nealon-Woods
said. "There is that aspect associated with aggressive crime that we've
always seen.
"What social media has done is give people with those
propensities a whole new platform."
But Nealon-Woods thinks there's more to it. Social media, she
says, is a tiny blip in the long and evolving history of human communication.
And no on one can be really sure what, if any, impact it will ultimately have
on the way we behave.
"It's one of those things that are evolving," she said.
"It has been a major, really disruptive innovation in our lives and, like
anything that us human beings do, it's taking us quite a while to adapt and
change and respond."
While millions, if not billions, of people use social media in
healthy, happy ways every day, Nealon-Woods said there are some -- and not just
criminals -- who haven't adjusted so well.
Their inability to pick up the new social norms result in
behaviors ranging from Internet trolling to oversharing to the sort of
misguided posts that can embarrass users or land them in jail.
The physically isolating aspect of social media is probably part
of the equation, she said. When we can communicate with other people without
seeing or hearing them, something in the brain makes it harder to remember that
there are still consequences for what we say, she said.
"We've removed that human interaction, and that is giving
people a false sense of the extremes they can go to," Nealon-Woods added.
"I really do believe that's one of the main reasons that people are
posting things where other people are saying, 'Oh my gosh!' "
Social media is a young form of communication that will take time
for some people to adjust to, she said. In the meantime, Rutledge, the
Massachusetts researcher, notes one upside of when awkward online behavior and
crime mix.
"The good news is that compulsion to brag about getting away
with these activities increases the probability of getting caught," she
said. "Without social media, it would have been much harder to find the
culprits, much less prosecute (them)."
@ CNN Tech
