One of the most worrisome issues of the use of ICTs, and by extension social networking tools, is cyber bullying. Belsey (n.d.) indicates that it "involves the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others" (Home section, para. 1). As with privacy, children and teens are the groups most likely to be affected by this problem. There have been even some cases of suicide, as reported in the Wikipedia article about cyber bullying; the suicides of Ryan Halligan and Megan Meier (Wikipedia, n.d., Harmful Effects section, para. 4), two American teenagers who committed suicide after been cyber bullied when using IM and MySpace respectively. Just for reference, as it goes beyond the scope of this thesis, this article is very comprehensive; among other aspects it reports surveys, statistics and legislation about this issue.

Also related to extreme criminal cases, it appears that the media has coined the term "Facebook murder"; this can be seen in the following and recent articles in the online version of BBC News:

In different measures, the issues presented in this last subsection are worrisome. In the first case it doesn't feel right when an organization which can be using social media forbids completely the access to them to its workers, when some policies and limitations could be friendly discussed. Social climbers are probably not an issue worthy of too much concern but it would depend on an individual's purpose when using social networks, as not everybody befriends someone whom he or she doesn't now. The third instance of cyber bullying and crime is perhaps the darkest side of social networks discussed on this thesis. It is very important to be aware of it, as the Internet and Web 2.0 could be very dangerous to young and malleable minds. Other possible issues are about how the use of social networks can affect real world human relationships, especially love relationships; and finally about alienation or how do social networks will make one person avoid physical and personal relationships in favor of virtual communication.