Social media has become a very important tool for police investigation. For example, they can use direct messages between parties, they can post video evidence to the public to ask for assistance or they can search for posts that may contain clues to an investigation.
“Six Winnipeggers are facing drug and weapons-related charges after a recent social media video prompted an investigation”
While social media can be of great help for solving criminal investigations, it can also be useful for the criminals. With everyone posting where they are on vacation or posting about the fancy items they have in their house, that can potentially helps criminals target their victims.
Not only does social media influence physical crime it also has a huge role on cyber crime. Cyber crime has grown immensely over the past decade, some of the most common cyber crimes consist of: identity theft, cyberbullying, stalking, threatening and personal information breaches.
In 2019, social media crimes statistics showed a whopping 4.1 billion records were compromised. As shocking as the figure is, what is even more mind-boggling is that these figures only reflect breaches occurring in the first half of 2019. By the end of 2019, this figure more than doubled to reach 9.6 billion.
(Lazic,2021)
I believe the content that gets posted on social media affects how the younger audience perceives reality. Some may think what they see online is really what happens in real life and they try to replicate that.
“In 2013, a 16 year old boy in Ottawa, Canada was arrested for making bomb threats to schools across North America. While this type of crime is now not particularly uncommon, what is different is the way in which he was caught; his extensive bragging about his anonymous phone calls on Twitter eventually brought the police to his door” (Surette,2016)
Do you think social media plays a role in physical and or cyber crime?
Twitter – Social Media Made Me Do It #CrimeInSocialMedia https://bit.ly/3d9xwzP
Facebook – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly of Social Media https://bit.ly/3d9xwzP
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 
Hello, What a amazing blog you have posted. I do agree that social media can influence the crime rate. Thanks for the post
Best of luck,
Ali
Good post. I like the images you chose.
It would be interesting to speak to police officers, especially those who started before social media became prevalent, about any trends they may have noticed between crime rates and social media.