Blurred Boundaries

I recently read a shocking article online that showed how a jumble of fantasy and reality can be very frightening. A 12-year old girl was found stabbed 19 times by her two friends in a forest. Her two friends, who were both also 12-years old, told the police that they were planning to kill her friend so that they can "impress a ghoulish character called slender man"(CNN). They explained that to impress the Slenderman, they had to kill a friend of theirs. The Slenderman is an urban legend born from an internet meme that has been going around for some time now. He is supposedly a tall man with no face who abducts children. I believe it is actually getting pretty famous and popular among the American culture, as many images of him can be seen online (like the one above) and even many virtual games about Slenderman are being created.

The girl's injuries were not life-threating but it is unbelievably freighting to hear that very young kids could potentially grow the thought of killing their friends based on an urban legend born from an internet meme. One of the two girls was known by her family that she has been showing a great deal of interest in the fictional character, Slenderman for a long time. According to her brother,  she was a "normal happy 12-year old with a couple of weird interests". She was a frequent visitor of this website that posts fictional horror stories, many of which are written to make them seem like true stories. I believe this could be seen as a common problem in the world right now where any kind of information could be accessed instantly by anyone. This girl probably didn't start to grow violent thoughts until she got exposed to all of the horror-related information online. The over exposure to the information on the internet made this girl lose sense of what is real and what is not. It is very dangerous how boundaries for reality and imagination has become very blurred in society nowadays. So many information, both true and false, are so easily accessible that it could make people become numb in determining what is reality and what is imaginary. Especially to young kids, like these 12-year old girls, it will be much harder for them to fully differentiate the information that they get exposed to. This makes me realize the fact that convenience always comes with a down side and it is the younger generation that gets affected the most.