Why Privacy on Social Media is crucial

 

As a teenager and a college student who uses social media every day for either academic, work, or communication purposes, I’ve recently begun realizing the amount of my personal info that is out there for anyone to see. After watching the TED Talks from Professor Smiths blog about privacy, I found out how our data is being tracked more than I thought. I always knew that being on social media, there were risks to my private info being leaked, however I figured that if I was responsible and kept my social media accounts private, I would be safe. However, I learn now that is not the case which is very concerning. In one of the TED Talks, Juan Enriquez told us about the fact that technology,  especially AI, is getting more and more advanced. It tracks what we are interested in, the places that we go to, and who we speak to online. Our personal data is everywhere, and sometimes we don’t even realize it. Another one of the TED Talks that I watched was by Christopher Soghoian and it talks about  how even the government can have easy access to our data. That’s really scary to me, especially because I often use social media, and find that it is a big part of our life in this generation. In Darieth Chisolms ted talk, she told us about how easy it is for people to overshare on social media, even by accident. Most of us post pictures or stories without thinking twice about it, and it can be hard to take back if we wanted to, even if we delete the content shared. A lot of the time, people can use the info that we post in ways that we typically didn't expect, and it can be dangerous.

To protect our privacy better, I think that we can think twice before we post something and be more careful about what we are sharing online especially if it is part of our personal life. I also think that we should make sure that the passwords we use are secure and strong, to avoid being hacked. We should fight for better privacy rules in social media and push for stronger laws to protect our data. Lastly, We should educate ourselves about privacy because the more informed we are, the better we can prevent our privacy being violated. Privacy is extremely important, specifically for college students like me who use social media on an everyday basis. We need to be more careful about what we put out there and be aware of how our data is being used. By being careful and preserving our privacy, we can enjoy the digital world without as much risk.