Down to the Wire 2007: Friend Request Accepted

Nathalie Whitaker talks about Gen-Y and charitable giving online.

Down to the Wire 2007: Friend Request Accepted

Accusations of teenage murder, pleas of innocence and heartfelt imploring for a girl to leave the teacher she had run away with. Very private dramas were played out in public in 2007 via social network site profiles.

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The mainstream media had been warning us for a couple of years of the dangers of overexposing ourselves online. In 2007, a rash of incidents gave them the opportunity to gloat – and gloat they did with headlines trumpeting every misstep we took on social networks during the year.

Some New Zealanders had been using social network sites of various forms since the early-2000s, while others were still staying well clear in 2007. An unfortunate few rushed on without reading the safety signs in the mid-2000s and quickly became headline fodder.

With all of these negative stories one could be forgiven, from the outside, of thinking social networking sites were nothing but trouble. But some charitable organisations were starting to harness networks for good, such as Givealittle that launched in 2008.