The Action

The team set up two bogus Facebook accounts to see how easy it would be to make people believe they were real people. One Facebook page burst into life within a few hours and had over 1,260 “friends” over the time of the project. The team was very surprised at the ease in which people would add “friends”. Many never questioned whether these people were real or not. 

The team cooperated with many partners during this project including school management, parents/guardians, local community Gardai, Dr. Maureen Griffin, a local solicitor and the Psychology Department in University of Limerick. In response to the issue, the group composed surveys, organised a 24 hour social media fast for students, created a short film about the dangers of sharing personal information online and sent it viral and created two fictitious Facebook accounts as an experiment.

The Impact

The team ran workshops for parents on Internet safety and are also produced an information pamplet to be distributed through schools. They were featured on RTE’s Prime Time.