Distraught parents of a 16-year-old boy have taken to Facebook to warn people of the danger of pranking online.
Sue and Joe Davis from Co. Meath in Ireland, made the video after their son was the target of an online joke gone wrong.
Sue and Joe's son, Daniel, was the subject of the hoax post which said he had broken into an elderly woman's home on Halloween night and asked anyone who saw him to call Trim Garda Station.
The Trim police have confirmed that there was no break in and it was all a joke.
After the false post was shared, Sue said the Daniel received numerous phone calls and death threats on social media.
Sue became so worried she wouldn't allow Daniel to go to his pre-debs.
She told the Irish Times: “I wouldn’t let him go to his pre-debs because I was worried sick that if I let him go, and someone had seen the post and didn’t see the second video, he could actually get a hiding off somebody. I wouldn’t let him go and he was very upset.”
Sue first learned of the video when a friend called and said, "when you turn on your Facebook page there will be a picture of Daniel after breaking into a house in Kinnegad and assaulting a woman.
"But don't worry it's just a prank page," her friend insisted.
When she confronted Daniel about it, he said it was his school friend that posted it and he had already apologised for it.
“I rang the dad of the child because he is a good friend. I said, ‘I need you to come around because your son is after putting up a post of my son that is a hoax, but not everybody knows it’s a hoax and he is getting life-threatening [calls].
“I actually got the family to sit and do a video with the whole lot of us, put it on Facebook and obviously shared it with as many people as possible and asked them to keep sharing and sharing and sharing to get it out to as many people as possible,” Sue said.
In the video, both families warn people of the dangers of social media and how a joke can turn into something more sinister.
“Social media is brilliant in one way and it’s not in other ways. It has great things that it can give to people, so fast and quick, but it can also take away somebody’s life fairly quick as well," Sue added.
