Social Media And Privacy

Social media is such a powerful part of our everyday lives in todays society. It is crazy to think about how many people we know, including ourselves, are wrapped up in all these different social media programs. There are two sides to this topic. There is the good side which shows how helpful social media can be. It is a way of networking with many people who otherwise you might not meet. There are many programs such as LinkedIn which help you connect with people who can be very beneficial to your future success. The other side to the social media epidemic is the negative side to it. The side where there is cyber bullying in all different forms. People can be terrorized on these social media sites such as twitter for being different than the "majority". This is a terrible thing because it attacks people who are doing nothing wrong but some random people think they deserve to be treated poorly. In some extreme cases we see people committing suicide or hurting themselves in some other way because they think these random people bullying them are making sense. It is a terrible thing and how social media can be a bad thing.

I Have Nothing To Hide

Online privacy is a very limited idea in todays world. People are asked how safe do they feel and they respond they have nothing to hide. My feeling on this is people are generally unaware of how unsafe there information is. They also might be unaware of all the information they actually have online. Sometimes people do not understand all the information they have put on their Facebook pages or twitter accounts that actually tells more about them than they realize. They do not think about the reality of hackers and how they can obtain information that these people think is private. As great as the internet is and all the privacy policies it has to offer there are holes everywhere and hackers find these holes and steal information from people and most of the time people do not understand its happened until its too late.

As for me I would have considered myself one of these people prior to being introduced to this class. I would regard myself as someone who is very careful about what I put online however I know there is more than I think. Like I said in the previous paragraph I understand there is probably more information about me online than I think which does scare me a bit. Even though it is still early in this class I have learned a lot about how the internet word and how it is nowhere close to 100% safe. After seeing the videos I have and reading the articles I have it scares me to think how available my information is and how it could be obtained by hackers. Knowing that I do understand there are parts that are safe but you just always need to be careful about what gets put up online.

The Internet in Todays' Society

The Internet is a very powerful thing. It can be used for many good things and be very helpful. However it can also be very bad and a very dangerous medium in todays electronic world. The internet has thousands and thousands of useful facts that help people every day in their daily searches. I personally use it everyday for school work and other forms of social media to connect with friends. Although it has all of these good purposes it also has many negative ones. The power of the internet has allowed people to steal personal information from others. Identity left has been a huge problem and it affects many people today. Hopefully we can work on this problem and help find a solution to prevent these bad things and have the internet only for positive use.

Andrew Eriksen