Effects of Social Media

                                                Effects of Social Media

Admittedly, as a person who has limited social life, I think highly of social media at first because for introverts like me, finally can communicate with others without face to face, no longer worry it will end up being like confrontation.

Since on social media, every user appears as a digital being with its digital identity. By clicking and adding a new friend, users start a relation to someone, and by deleting or blocking someone from friend list signals its end.

Also, everyone has a same platform to present self. In reality, most people are ordinary, but now everyone get an equal chance to portray themselves as they would like to be, getting a taste of being a public figure.  

The most significant benefit is, you can keep undated of your friends wherever they are. On LinkedIn, you can know about someone’s career, reputations and relationships with other people. People can even send resumes and seek jobs via LinkedIn; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, displays friends’ daily life, people usually check in their location online and record the activity.    More and more business set its marketing on social media, usually targeting on the young people or a specific group.

However, as I use it more and more frequently, it prompted my concerns in several aspects.

The first must be information security. People expose their location, activity and personal information to those who unknown, it is risky itself. Once you put your personal information on internet, it will no longer be private. Only with your single name, a stalker could be able to find you on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc, and then with more information he obtained from the first social media exposed, he could even discover the rest. Finally, incorporating all the fragmentary information from your different social media accounts, a stalker could basically construct your life.

As more and more social media emerged, they developed tactics other than basic social networking function to attract potential users, and one major trend is emphasize cultural differences and break down to details. That requires users present more specifics covering individual hobby, musical taste, movies, sports, the most visited clothing store and restaurant; and even when and where did you put your comment, your relations with people recently…By grasping all your personal information on social media, a stranger could know as much about you as your friends round you do. In other words, you entire life is online.

The second is social media can't discern and filter information itself, rumors or scandals spread widely and quickly on it. As to scandal and rumors, if someone's privacy leaked, and want to chase down the one who did that, the anonymity of some social media helps those people keep hidden. They don’t discern and filter massive information the same as social media itself.

Brent Turvey once mentioned in his book Criminal Profiling: An introduction to behavioral evidence analysis: “We like to discover romantic features where they do not exist and we even prefer the recital of monstrosities and horrors to that of common every day facts. This is implanted in the nature of everyone, and though in some to a greater, in some to a lesser, extent, still there it is. A hundred proofs, exemplified by what we read most, by what we listen to most willingly, by what sort of news spreads the faster, show that the majority of men have received at birth a tendency to exaggeration.”   Eventually, it causes some encounter invasion of privacy or violence of personal dignity, sometimes even loss of property and individual safety. Since August 31 this year, about 500 pictures containing nudity of many celebrities (most are female) released in public and disseminated by internet users. And anonymity of social networking protects those hackers from being located. In theory, they get adequate time and tactics keep themselves hidden. Even if they are found out and convicted, people who disseminated and watched those images would never be castigated; In the meantime, very few of those realize the first thing to do should be chase down who posted these photos other than storing them and seek more online. In countries with more conservative culture and sensitive social ethos like China, this kind of incident would put the victims in an even more difficult situation.

Although it was caused by breach of Apple’s iCloud service, Apple confirmed that hackers obtained those images by getting account information first such as passwords. Even the celebrities don’t fully aware of how risky it would be if don’t stay vigilant when they use social media, let alone the ordinary people that mostly have a thought of there is nothing worthy hacking or stalking on their accounts.

How did these hackers get the account information like passwords? FBI listed about several common tactics used to exploit online social networks and relatively preventive measures. And an article by a guest author from media bistro also illustrated five threats to security when one using social media, reminding people of what action might have one’s account stolen, have burglars visiting during one’s travel, and let stalkers find you, last but not least, don’t be overconfident about your account.