Thursday, April 3, 2014

Social Networks Diminishing Privacy


Privacy plays a huge role in social networks. Many users feel like their personal data is safe on social networking sites because they have set high levels of security settings. According to Jung, social networks encourage people to be more public about their personal lives. Although some social networks allow people to control who can view their posts, some people forget they have control over their posts or they have difficulty controlling their posts.
         Privacy is a huge problem for young people. Young people are too open and public with personal information on social networks. Most of these young people don’t read the website’s privacy policies and may be unaware that their information is at risk of disclosure to third parties like advertisers. When a user is too open with personal information, it can affect their opportunities with employment and recruitment to their dream college. Employers and college admission recruiters review the candidate’s Facebook profile or twitter before hiring or accepting the candidate. Chances are if the employers or college admission recruiters find something negative on the candidate’s profile, they won’t offer the candidate an opportunity.
The problems privacy brings on social networks pushes people to think twice before they post something online. Once something is published, it's there forever, whether or not they delete it. People incidentally use social networks as an outlet to say what’s on their mind and post pictures of everything they do. With this outlet, people fail to realize that their private and personal lives are now public. Users should consider adjusting their privacy settings. Users can also consider changing the account name to their first and middle name, so they can protect themselves.


Work Cited
Beres, Damon. Reader's Digest. N.d. April 4, 2014. From http://www.rd.com/slideshows/negative-effects-of-social-media/

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