Brittney Williams describes herself as the perfect junior in high school. She likes country, rap, video games, volleyball, Gossip Girl and The Office. She is single. Interested in guys. And looking for a relationship.

But Brittney Williams is fake.

Over a 10 day span, Brittney Williams (created by our staff) became whatever her Facebook friends wanted. We made the Facebook page, sent friend requests and within minutes she already had a friend. One friend turned into 10 and that turned into 196 friends.

Brittney received her first message soon after her first friend confirmation. The message asked who she was and how they knew her. We used the same general reply to anyone who asked, “I’m new at Legacy, and I think I’ve seen you around. I’m just tryin’ to make new friends.” The majority of messages Brittney received were from guys who confirmed her friend request before they asked if they knew her.

Now that you’re checking your Facebook to see if you’re friends with her, do you know exactly who all of your Facebook friends are? We purposely were vague in our description, only used one picture and gave out as little information as possible. Even with that, Brittney received three phone numbers, all from guys, and other messages of guys flirting with her.

Junior Brad Jackson* was one of those guys. He began by asking if he knew her. Jackson went on to say Brittney was cute and when we asked about him and who exactly he was, he gave us his number to text him.

Sophomore Jennifer Andrews* was the first to accept Brittney’s friend request. Andrews never sent a message to Brittney; she accepted the friend request and went on with her life.

“I usually just accept anyone who sends me a friend request,” Andrews said. “[I am] kind of creeped out [now] because I don’t know whose Facebook is real.”

Junior Joseph Smith also gave our fake account, Brittney, his phone number. Smith messaged her first, said she was very pretty and after our generic response, he gave out the number saying he’d be her friend.

“I added her because she was cute and just to be her friend,” Smith said. “[Now] it makes me feel stupid for giving her my number.”

We used some of the numbers and a simple Internet search to find students’ home addresses. Are you going through your friends yet? Even though we weren’t searching for people to stalk, we could have easily found any naive student.

Most of the students who received friend requests from us accepted. There were people, however, who rejected them. When junior Othoniel Rojo checked his friend requests that day, he denied Brittney Williams.

“I didn’t know her, and it would be really weird to add someone I didn’t know,” Rojo said. “It has to be someone I’ve heard of; not some random girl.”

Ashleigh Hall was found dead in Sedgefield, England after allegedly arranging a date with a stranger she met on the Internet. She was raped and murdered by 33-year-old Peter Chapman who was posing as a teenager on Facebook.

“I think it’s really scary how much people believe what’s written on the Internet,” Assistant Principal Kim Murphree said.

It took us a few minutes to set up the fake account and even less time for almost 200 students to trust us. According to momlogic.com, online predators are patient and will target anyone.

According to a survey done by Teen Leadership, 48 boys and 15 girls had admitted to talking to someone online about meeting them in person. Another survey showed that 52 boys and 31 girls said they had added someone on Facebook because they thought they were hot.

Our tips to be safer on Facebook:
1. Don’t add people you don’t know.
2. Make sure your profile is only available to see by your friends.
3. Make sure your phone number doesn’t show.
4. Be careful of what information you make available.
5. Just because a person is a friend with one of your other friends, doesn’t make it safe.
6. Always look at Facebook’s privacy settings.
7. Never give out phone numbers, addresses, or what car you drive.
8. Never meet up with an unknown person.