Social Media – The Good, The Bad and the 'Not-So-Private'

My Social Status

Let me talk about the internet. To be more exact, the social networks that everyone is now a part of. I mean, everyone has access to everything. I'd say 90% of my school is a member in the social networking sites, even teachers! With social networks, it is easy to post anything you'd like. Just make sure that you won't mind it being found 5 years from now. Privacy is the most important thing in social networking and it's the most neglected. Before you post, think twice and see if you wouldn't mind it being saved and manipulated.

Here are 3 questions that will expand my thoughts on the previous paragraph.

1. Are you a member of a social networking website?  Why or why not?
2. Have you checked your privacy settings lately?  Who can see the information that you put out there?
3. What kind of information are you allowing others to have access to?  Have you thought about this before?
4. What kinds of things are safe to post?  Unsafe?  List some unsafe information that you should keep to yourself and not allow others to see online.
5. How can we become more responsible users of social network websites?  Why is this so important?

1. Social networks are a great way to communicate with people anywhere in the world. I am in the world of Facebook; this is to communicate with my relatives in the Philippines, Instagram; this is to share pictures of my life to whoever and I use to be on Tumblr; a world of freedom and thoughts and imagination. 

2. There would be presentations in school where a person would talk about safety online. Honestly, this is when I get reminded to check my privacy settings. It's different for every social networks. My privacy settings are to my friends only, but that's for Facebook. Instagram, anyone can see my photos. I haven't got the time to change the privacy settings yet.

3.I don't really let everyone look at everything on my profile for Facebook. I fixed my privacy settings where only my friends could see it. But honestly, I feel like anyone can see it. That's the thing about the online world, anyone has access to your stuff. I think about my safety and my privacy on websites like Facebook, but I've stopped using it. I don't want to be on it anymore because I usually don't think about what I post. It's safer that I'm off it. Good thing I'm not a member of the Twitter world. 

4. There's only somethings that are safe to post or allow for other people to see. Like for example, on Facebook, they want you to update everything on your profile. When they ask you to do this, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to fill it out. You could keep almost everything private. I'd say what are safe to post, but it's easier to say the unsafe things. Personal information is the most private thing, so like address, phone number, even saying where you attend school is dangerous. Also some photos should not be shared and updating your location at the moment (issue mostly for Twitter members.)

5. People need to be aware of what they do online because anyone can get access to it. It can be saved and manipulated. Being responsible online can help you and maybe even save you. It's dangerous and you wouldn't really want some pedophile to be saving pictures of you on his computer and then he gets updates of you in twitter of what you're doing and where you're going. Now doesn't that sound scary? Well, yeah because it is! Be careful of what you post online and think twice before posting anything. 

Should I post this? Hmmm....