Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax: Parents, be wary of 'Catfish' relationships (+video)
(Read article summary)The Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax is a textbook example of a "Catfish" relationship -- a relationship between a real person and an online impersonator. Kids can fall for a Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax, too.
If you’ve been trying to warn your children about the pitfalls of social media relationships, you have a new spokesman: Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o.
Te’o’s story goes way beyond Facebook “relationship status” drama.
The dish, for those of you non sports fans:
Te’o became the darling of sports media after performing brilliantly on the field while suffering the loss of both his beloved grandmother and his girlfriend. Just days after getting the horrible news about the deaths, which occurred within hours of each other in September of last year, he led his team to a Cinderella victory over Michigan State.
He finished second in the voting for this year’s Heisman Trophy.
Te’o spoke openly about the pain of losing both women.
“Every morning I wake up and my girlfriend is not on the phone it reminds me that she’s gone ... I go through it every day,” he told the Boston Globe in November.
Problem was: the girlfriend wasn’t real.
