My Online Presence

    Together, the internet and social media have changed society as we know it. It’s crazy to think that my generation is the last generation whose baby pictures won’t be on an iPhone (or another smart phone). At first, I saw social media as a fun way to interact with people online, or to share memorable moments with my friends and family. I never really thought about the negative effects, or the invasions of privacy that come along with it. I always kept in mind that I should keep my accounts private, so strangers don’t see my location, or personal information. However, I never thought twice about sharing my age, phone number, email address, or location with the social media cites themselves. I am on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and VSCO. I have personally never been a big Facebook user. I downloaded the app going into my freshman year of college as a way for me to connect with High Point’s class of 2022. Other than that, I never post on it or scroll through the app for personal enjoyment. I recently deleted the Instagram app off of my phone because I found myself mindlessly scrolling through my feed out of boredom, essentially just wasting my time. I also feel as though Instagram is the unhealthiest form of social media for my generation, followed by Snapchat. I feel as though Instagram is the unhealthiest form of social media for my generation because people are constantly posting pictures and videos of themselves to present themselves in the most perfect way possible. Instagram influencers and famous people use photoshop to make themselves look so unrealistic which leads to people setting unrealistic expectations for themselves. This is overall unhealthy and could lead to many issues such as body image issues, and self-acceptance issues amongst other things. People only post pictures of themselves looking and feeling their best. Someone who could appear to be this extremely happy person online with the perfect family and endless friendships, could actually be depressed in real life and you would never know. The reason why I said snapchat was the second unhealthiest form of social media is because this is where people generally post the most frequently and where I believe sparks a lot of peoples’ “FOMO”, otherwise known as, “fear of missing out”. If someone is sitting home alone on a Friday night with no plans, seeing endless pictures and videos of people having fun with loved ones will only make them feel worse. I personally would say I use Snapchat and Twitter the most. Although Snapchat definitely has its negatives, it’s the only form of social media whose main purpose is to have direct contact with close friends and family. It’s like iMessage but with pictures. I would say that I frequently use Twitter because it’s a great news source and I see a lot of funny content. Twitter is also much less personal compared to other social media platforms. However, I do think that a lot of false news and cyber bullying happens on Twitter. I like VSCO because it’s very lowkey and you can’t see how many likes someone gets on their pictures or how many followers they have. You can only see your own personal activity. Another positive to VSCO is that people can’t comment on what you post which leaves no room for cyber bullying. I would say that a con to the app is that some people post inappropriate content on the app because it’s so lowkey. Lastly, I recently downloaded TikTok last year. I’m proud to say I’m one of the only people I know who isn’t addicted to it. I don’t post anything on TikTok and I never even open the app unless my friends send me videos. I plan on deleting this app as well because it doesn’t serve me much meaningful purpose. 

    Reading about why 8^th grader, Sondi, decided to opt out of social media has reassured my decision in deleting the Instagram app and farther encouraged me to delete TikTok. Unfortunately, I have to keep Facebook because my sorority has a Facebook group that is mandatory that I regularly check for updates. It was crazy to learn about how stripped away from our own personal privacy we are because of the internet. Facebook has ways to see our location whether or not we have our location settings turned on. Although Facebook gives us the impression, we can decide whether or not to share our location with them, they use our information from our browsing habits, IP address, Wi-Fi network, and even Bluetooth to figure out our location and use this information to place targeted ads inside their apps. Facebook also uses your personal information to create individual lists of “traits and interests” for all of its active users. I’m sure it’s not the only social media app that does this. In my opinion, privacy doesn’t exist anymore. The internet and the media like to make it seem as if we get to decide what personal information we share with them, but they will find out what they want to find out regardless. Google also strips us away from our privacy by keeping track of online and offline purchases. That’s right! They can keep track of our real-world purchases through receipts pent up in our Gmail accounts. According to the Washington Post, Google has “access to 70 percent of transactions for credit and debit cards in the United States”. 

     I think the saddest part about all of this is our detachment from the real world. In reality, the more connected to the internet we become, the lonelier we are. People now go to marriage counseling, or therapy for things that used to be considered “everyday problems” because they don’t believe they have a single person to talk to about their personal problems with. They don’t believe anybody genuinely cares about them. What gets lonelier than that? The majority of patients in therapy don’t have a psychiatric diagnosis at all. They just need to talk to someone who cares. We are all broadening our social connections every day on the internet, but those connections are getting shallower and shallower. Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at NYU, writes: “Reams of published research show that it’s the quality, not the quantity of social interaction, that best predicts loneliness.” We as human beings need genuine human interaction that you can’t get through a phone screen. Roughly 20 percent of Americans, about 60 million people, are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness. Loneliness that’s due to social media and slowly increasing by the year. In 1950, less than 10 percent of American households contained only one person and nearly 27 percent of households had just one person by 2010. I think that we all need to start being careful with how much we use social media and put more efforts into our face-to-face social interactions. Nurses and physicians have begun to speak about an epidemic of loneliness. An epidemic that we can end by putting down the phone. We weren’t made to live through other people’s lives on a screen, or to live in a household all alone for half of our lives. Us as humans thrive off of human interaction. The quality of those interactions is what makes us thrive. And what better quality is there then looking at someone right in front of you as opposed to through a phone screen. 

https://www.fastcompany.com/90315706/kids-parents-social-media-sharing 

https://www.fastcompany.com/section/the-privacy-divide

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/facebook-users-still-dont-know-how-facebook-works/580546/ 

https://www.theatlantic.com/search/?q=facebook

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-03/millions-of-facebook-records-found-on-amazon-cloud-servers?srnd=premium