21. Kitty
"Do you have a social media page?"
"One? Dozens." Sara rolled her eyes. Was Sofia serious? She, having a social media page. This was ridiculous.
"Right, you are a social butterfly. I bet you're in a million groups and chat every free second with dozens of people from all over the world."
"You got me."
"I knew it." Sofia laughed. "You know I do have a social media page."
"Really?"
"Yes, not under my name, not with a picture of me, but I do have a page to stay in contact with people from school, colleague. It's easier to stay in contact this way."
"No, it's being in contact. You see and read what people do, but you are not in contact unless you write to them regularly. Like you are not in contact with people who walk pass your window every day just because you see them. Being in contact, being friend with somebody is more than watching the other person what he or she is doing. Interacting means you talk, you hear the voice, you are eye to eye. There is nothing personal on a chat. You don't see the other one, you don't hear the other one. It could be somebody else pretending it's your friend and you won't know until the other person blows the cover by not knowing a detail your friend would know."
"You have a way to ruin the joy in harmless things."
"Most times these pages are harmless but as the last case has showed us, these pages can be very dangerous too."
"True." Sofia paused for a second. "Some of my friends have photos of their kids online, I told them it's not a good idea but they insist it's okay because only friends can see their photos."
"Even if this is true - and we both know every half talented hacker can get into a private page - you shouldn't upload photos of children. They don't know what you're doing, they have no idea about possible threats and they'll think it's normal and cool to post photos and will do the same later."
"When I see children with tablets and smart phones I wonder if this is really a good idea. Sure, these gadgets belong to our society nowadays but besides all the possible danger we just more or less mentioned and I know we didn't say pedophiles get their hands on these photos too and use meetings to kidnap children, what happened to playing with friends? Play tag, hide and seek or an old-fashioned board game. You see more and more parents and children hide behind their phones and less and less interacting. No phone can give you what your parents' attention gives you." Not that Sara knew much about positive attention of parents, not from her own experience.
"I totally agree with you and I enjoy the fact we meet for real, not via a chat program or on the phone. Talking to you face to face is good, makes me happy."
"Thank you." Sara smiled. "I enjoy our meetings too. We've done this for such a long time, I can't imagine not to meet you after a big case and talk to you."
"So you'd click LIKE under my photo?"
Sara laughed. "Depends on the photo. Will it be you in uniform?"
"Nah, me in a bikini."
"Now we're back to porn on the internet."
"I take it as a compliment that a photo of me in my bikini is as good as porn. It must mean I'm very sexy." Sofia grinned and gave Sara a hug. Tonight she'd check her page and make sure there were no information she didn't want out in the world wide web.