Last year, when University of Minnesota freshman Margaux Jensen was a senior at Waconia High School, some of her classmates heard that a student was heading out of town for vacation with his family. The response was classic teen rebellion, but with a modern twist: The high schoolers, who broke into the family's home and threw a raucous, house-trashing party, had gotten the vacation news via the student's Facebook feed.
Such "over-sharing" blunders are a worrisome byproduct of the rapidly increasingly prevalence of social media.
But recent geolocation technology such as Foursquare and Facebook's Places feature, which allow users to "check in" to an exact location on a map and see who else is there, are ratcheting up concerns that more abuse will occur, putting young people at risk.
"This new technology, it can be used for good -- finding friends in the same mall," said Cris Clapp Logan, communications director for Enough Is Enough, an Internet-awareness organization based in Virginia. "Or bad -- in the targeting of kids by a predator. Everyone just needs to be educated about it, and be smart."
These new location services are wildly popular with young people, who can use their mobile devices to track their friends' locations. The days of wondering where all the cool kids were hanging out are gone; these sites make it easy to get a mutual group of friends together, because you can see who else is checked in where you are.
"It's cool, people know exactly where you are," said Lakeville North junior Emi Kidder. "Now you know where everyone is hanging out. A lot of my friends are on it. It's getting popular."
To some, it may seem surprising that someone would release enough personal information to enable crimes against themselves. But Linda Criddle, president of the Safe Internet Alliance, said it happens all the time, spurred by the slow desensitizing of society to such self-leaks.
"Robberies have been happening through MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook for years," she said. "It's just getting more popular. And Places is another manifestation. What makes it particularly dangerous, of course, is the number of members on Facebook."