Social Media and Privacy

Before social networks and media if someone was raped not many people knew about it. Now everyone knows. News travels so quickly in todays world that even if you don't know someone on a personal level, you have probably heard an embarrassing story about them or at least know some of the huge life events. At first social media was created to share life events with friends that you don't see or talk to daily. Now people use social media to bring other down and ruin their lives. Its disgusting how low some people will go to truly hurt someone because it gives them satisfaction. It's also a shame that people end up taking their lives because of these things. Maybe if we didn't have social media to post pictures about a rape to the world then less people would hurt themselves and they would be able to deal with what happened to them instead of getting teased for it. They didn't asked to be raped, and they didn't ask for it to be known across the country. However, social media allows rape situations to go viral which only end up hurting the victim more.

I Have Nothing to Hide

When some people are asked about how private they keep their life on social media they respond with "I have nothing to hide." This is very untrue with all of the technology that we have now a days. Everyone should be concerned with how private they keep things on the Internet because once it is there, it is there forever. I recently learned that even if you "delete" something that it is still there forever and can be dug up with a little bit of work. People also don't understand that the government has access to everything. After finding that out in the video we watched in class, I went back and looked at my privacy settings to make sure I was keeping all my personal information hidden from people I didn't want seeing it. The government has all the technology to save almost everything you've done on social media which is wrong. The government going through our personal lives on social media and tracing what we search on google is also a violation of the fourth amendment. The government doesn't get permission to go through our lives on social media and trace everything we have done and everywhere we have been. I keep a lot of my personal information, such as bank and other personal numbers on my phone. The fact the government and other hackers can hack into our system even though they are private is unfair. We didn't give anyone permission to look through our personal lives, thus violating the fourth amendment.

This course seems very interesting so far. We have only been in it a couple of weeks and I've already learned so much about how the Internet and social media can effect us negatively. I am finally starting to realize how much multitasking we do daily and that we might not be as good at it as we think we are. I hope to learn how to use the Internet to my benefit instead of harming the way I learn.