COM304: Privacy

In this advanced and fast paced world of social media, privacy has become increasingly more questionable. Social media and communication technologies have provided such a positive platform for so many aspects of our modern lives, but with the good always comes the bad, and the concern of privacy is definitely the bad. As a 21-year-old communications major, it is safe to say that I am on a vast majority of social media sites. Back in 2006 when I first set up my Facebook account as a freshman in college, privacy concerns were never addressed. More recently however, in my college career, I have noticed this issue has gotten some serious face time. As a soon-to-be graduate, the job search is on, which means Facebook privacy is on lock-down for me. Although I am not ashamed of who I am or what I’ve done, I have to admit that my early college party days got the best of me and the unfortunately the pictures that came along with that, did not. I have made intense efforts to get rid of potentially embarrassing and damaging pictures but FB makes it nearly impossible to do so. My social media class here at UofL has taught me recently that FB is a scary place, very scary, and the amount of information that the right (well really wrong) person could collect on me just from using FB, is terrifying. I am a private person in my “real-life” so my virtual life is the same, and with the lack of privacy on the Internet these days, this has become difficult to manage. There have been many times that I have attempted to delete my FB account entirely but when I am almost finished, I end up not going through with it, because no matter how terrible it is, it is also a wonderful networking tool, and I can’t afford to give that aspect of it up. I personally do think that society should be concerned about their privacy, especially their “virtual privacy.” Our society today is almost entirely technology based and with this taken into consideration, I feel we should be able to express ourselves freely, in a tasteful way of course, without being scrutinized or penalized. My fear is that if we continue on this path of a lack of privacy ethics, we will soon be looking at a much more brutal playing field.

This comical diagram from Pinterest just about sums it up!