Social Media and Privacy

Social media can be a great tool, it can allow people to stay in touch with friends they haven't seen in a while and serve as a great way for communication. But it can also be abused easily. As we saw in the article, social media can be held accountable for a few deaths of young woman whose sexual assault was caught on tape and unfortunately posted on the internet. Privacy is a big deal with social media because once you post something on it, its on there forever. Regardless of if you delete it or not. And i feel that this is a good thing because with out it they would have never been able to catch who did these horrible crimes to these innocent girls, and bring justice to the perpetrators.

I Have Nothing to Hide

Now a days, everyone is getting their accounts hacked into, or some of their personal information is being published publicly. We always see those spam twitter direct messages we all get, where someones account was hacked, and they are now forced to change their password. Some reasons we should all be concerned about privacy is because no one has nothing to hide. In my eyes, everyone has something on the internet they do now want getting around. Whether its as small as an embarrassing picture, or as big as a police record, everyone has something. Another reason we should all be concerned about privacy is because once we have our information leaked, or someone gets a hold of it, theres no getting it back. Its out there forever. Personally I feel that everyone has something to hide, regardless of what it is, so everyone should be concerned about privacy.

Personally, I am very concerned about it. I understand it is to my own discretion that i post a tweet or a picture on social media, so I understand the implications that can potentially follow. But something such as companies being able to sell stuff you post I think is too much. I dont see a problem with a company seeing your personal info however, because you signed up. But not necessarily do I trust them. Who knows what they are doing with it. So I am concerned about it, I believe I dont have anything to hide but it still concerns me how much access companies can have to your personal info.

Internet Addiction with the Younger Generation

Growing up, our generation has always had the internet and social media around us. We grew up during the internet boom, and many social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter became very popular once our generation reached junior high. We don't know of a life that doesn't involve being connected through the internet. I feel as if many of the kids in our generation however don't rely as heavily on the internet as many of the kids younger than us do, specifically the middle school/junior high kids now. Personally, with my younger cousins and the kids I work with in the summer, I know how addicted they are to things such as Instagram and twitter. Many of them have their phones out at summer camp, on a beautiful 80 degree day, checking how many likes they got on a picture. Although kids our age seem to do the same, its a common trend with the middle schoolers now that all they seem to care about is something related to social media. Although social media can be a huge asset to have, ecspically something like a LinkedIn, it can also cause major distractions and can prove to be detrimental to how kids learn. It may just be a phase many of those kids are going through, but hopefully their obsession does not grow and continue to follow them as they grow older.