The Anti-Social reveal of the Social Network.

For those of you who live your lives under a rock, social networking is really what makes the world go round these days. The emo Myspace, the chavvy Bebo, the infamous Facebook; it is the ultimate way of contacting anyone from your friend across the world to your flat mate in the next room. A way of sharing photos from your latest drunken debacles to private messaging, group sharing, event organising- you know exactly who these people are, what they look like, where they are, who their with- everything. As Mark Zuckerberg says in the recent "Social Network" movie: "people want to go online and check out their friends, so why not build a website that offers that? Friends, pictures, profiles, whatever you can visit, browse around, maybe it's someone you just met at a party. I'm not talking about a dating site, I'm talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online." And that readers is definitely what weve got, a social experience that lets us live our lives online, behind our computer screens, where anything can happen. Weve lived our lives in farms, and then cities, and now online- but for some that luxury life online is a way of hidding from the world, becoming capable of anything.

A Berkshire man has been jailed for posting abusive messages online about a schoolgirl after she committed suicide. Sean Duffy, 25, of Reading, was handed an 18-week sentence this week for posts on social networking sites about Worcestershire teenager Natasha MacBryde, among others. The internet troll posted videos of defaced teenagers post their deaths and messages mocking the  teenagers and their families. Among his victims was Natasha MacBryde, 15, who died instantly when hit by a passenger train near her home in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. The day after Natasha's death in February, Duffy posted comments including "I fell asleep on the track lolz" on the Facebook tribute page created by her brother James and a further four days later he created a YouTube video called "Tasha the Tank Engine" featuring her face superimposed on to the front of the fictional childhood engine.

Duffy, didn't know any of his victims but pleaded guilty to two counts of sending malicious communications relating to Natasha and was found guilty on 3 other counts of "trolling". These included Lauren Drew, 14, of Gloucestershire, who was found dead after suffering a suspected epileptic seizure, Hayley Bates, 16, of Staffordshire, who died in a car crash, and Jordan Cooper, 14, who was stabbed to death in Northumberland.

On Mother's Day Sean Duffy posted a message on an online memorial page to Lauren reading: "Help me mummy, it's hot in hell". Duffy also produced an image of Hayley with crosses on her eyes and red marks on her face and wrote explicit messages to Hayley's sister Heather.The family of stabbing victim Jordan had also seen abusive messages directed at the youngster on an online memorial and a YouTube video defacing an image of the teenager. Magistrates saw fit to give Duffy an Asbo, banning him from using social networking sites for five years.

Is this finally a sign that our beloved Social Networking has gone a stretch too far? Albeit malicious communication through social networking is a new phenomenon but unfortunately it shows how such  technology can be abused. Will offenders stay hidden behind their computer screens under the guise of  'User 1' or will the likes of Facebook clamp down on trolls of cyber bullying.

-ZB