Social Media And Its Effects On Society

As human beings and citizens of the world, everyone values their privacy. It is a right that is often looked over and taken for granted by most. Since the beginning of time, there have been concerns about individuals’ rights to privacy and their personal information remaining confidential. Our founding fathers had concerns about this which is why, “…this right has developed into

Social media has become deeply embedded as a part of today’s American culture and lifestyles, changing the way people interact and communicate with one another. Americans use social media every day; to not only communicate, but to express themselves. These online media sites and blogs serve as entertainment for its users and give them a sense of a social life if they do not already have one. Some users become so obsessed with their online lives that they lose the ability to successfully communicate with people in real life. Their craving for the use of social media becomes an addiction to where they can spend countless hours on their social sites. Facebook, a popular social media cite, has been proven to cause Facebook Depression, a sickness in which a person is emotionally depressed and in self denial. Studies have shown that sites such as Facebook, are a direct link to an individual’s physical and emotional well being.

Modern Americans see privacy as one of the greatest freedoms. When Edward Snowden revealed the NSA surveillance program, the citizens of the United States were appalled by the extent of access the NSA had to personal information. However, according to Dan Tapscott in his essay, “Should We Ditch the Idea of Privacy?” we post just as many details daily on our numerous social media outlets. The majority of the information we freely post is not meaningful and does no harm to us by being public, yet there is a dangerous side to our open-book nature.

Privacy is one of the most controversial, yet most essential topics in the discussion of civil liberties. Some treat it as a necessity along with life, liberty, and property, whereas other people see it as something that shouldn’t get in the way of things like security (Sadowski).

Privacy is what allows people to feel secure in their surroundings. With privacy, one is allowed to withhold or distribute the information they want by choice, but the ability to have that choice is being violated in today’s society. Benjamin Franklin once said, “He who sacrifices freedom or liberty will eventually have neither.” And that’s the unfortunate truth that is and has occurred in recent years. Privacy, especially in such a fast paced moving world, is extremely vital yet is extremely violated, as recently discovered the NSA has been spying on U.S. citizens for quite a while now; based on the Fourth Amendment, the risk of leaked and distorted individual information, as well as vulnerability to lack of anonymity.

As a growing topic of discussion, privacy in our society has stirred quite some concern. With the increase of technology and social networking our standards for privacy have been altered and the boundary between privacy and government has been blurred. In the article, Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets, Peter Singer addresses the different aspects of privacy that are being affected through the use of technology. The role of privacy in a democratic society is a tricky endeavor, however, each individual has a right to privacy. In our society, surveillance undermines privacy and without privacy there can be no democracy.

Privacy in America is developing into a vague set of rules. Each person has a right to privacy, but the question remains: “How much information should be granted to the public”? The answer to this question varies from person to person. The industries, social networking, protection agency, and everyday situations create their own ideology of what must remain private.

A man named Louis Freeh once said “The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security.” As humans, we have a desire to keep our lives private and secure. However, security cannot come unless we give up parts of our privacy. Day by day we take actions to keep people safe that we mostly are not aware of. In our lives, we surrender our privacy for communal safety by doing drug tests, going into places with security measures, and by using the internet.

Consider the last status you posted to Facebook, the latest tweet on Twitter, and the last search you made in Google, and think, what is the common factor between the three? The answer is that each time you upload a picture, like a status, or search for something online, your audience is much larger than one would anticipate. Completely unaware to us, every click of the keyboard we make, leaves a trail of electronic footprints for companies and unsavory individuals to follow, gathering a plethora of information into every aspect of our lives. Until recently, privacy was not a major issue of concern. However, in recent years with the rise of the internet, ease of access, and growth of mobile technology, individual and societal awareness of the topic have made it a matter of concern. Therefore, throughout this paper we will not only define privacy

Today, individuals are sacrificing privacy in order to feel safe. These sacrifices have made a significant impact on the current meaning of privacy, but may have greater consequences in the future. According to Debbie Kasper in her journal, “The Evolution (Or Devolution) of Privacy,” privacy is a struggling dilemma in America. Kasper asks, “If it is gone, when did it disappear, and why?”(Kasper 69). Our past generation has experienced the baby boom, and the world today is witnessing a technological boom. Technology is growing at an exponential rate, thus making information easier to access and share than ever before. The rapid diminishing of privacy is leaving Americans desperate for change.

Privacy in today’s society has grown into an enormous fraud. Companies, small businesses, and government agencies all ask for and possess information about a person. This includes who they are, what they like, and who are they connected with. In the wrong hands this information can be used to steal identities. The general definition of privacy is, “a legal concept that concerns the ability of an individual or group to retreat entirely from public view, but is more commonly applied when discussing issues of a person’s right to maintain control of personal information about himself or herself” (“Right of Privacy”). The term privacy brings a psychological comfort, but in an imperfect and much observed world, privacy isn’t genuinely private. Furthermore, redefining privacy as a formal definition, could prevent many issues

Throughout history we have fought for many things, freedom, justice, nobility, and today we fight one of the biggest battles yet, we are fighting for our right to privacy. We as a public click away a number of liberties that we have never realised were there to be taken away, with the popularisation of the internet and social media we willingly allow more and more of our individual freedoms to be taken away. As technology evolves we must heed the warnings today in order to avoid an orwellian tomorrow

Addiction, profit and influence usually are not the first words you would expect to come to mind when thinking about the term “social media,” yet with a little digging you will soon realize it could be the perfect description. Social media can be defined as forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages and other content. Most often social media is understood as a positive concept because of the ways it has allowed us to attain cheap and easily accessible knowledge at the end of our fingertips. For example, take the average college student who would rather spend their last $20 at the bar you can conclude that there are superior consequences to abusing too much of a good thing; using social media has its own set of superior consequences.

Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are web-based activities that provide individuals access to build a public or a semi-public profile within a confined system, connect and find users that they share a connection with as well as view and navigate the list of connections that are made by other participants of the systems (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Social media is widely used by young adults contributing to about 84% of the total usage (Smith, 2011). Some of the popular reasons for widespread use of social media are staying in touch with near and dear ones especially with friends and family, making new friends, following famous politicians and celebrities and also in search of potential relationships (Smith, 2011). However as the use of social media becomes more widespread, we cannot help but express concerns over the effects that social media usage may have on our behavior. Over the past couple of decades, research has strongly linked social media usage with negative behavioral outcomes and is known to affect one’s overall well-being. This essay will begin by discussing some of the behavioral issues that result from social media usage, followed by criticisms of this argument. The recommendation will then highlight some ways by which the behavioural problems could be dealt with, acknowledging that self-monitoring and self-regulation are the main ways to tackle the issue.

In recent years, the world has changed by modern technological developments. People in these days are living real revolution and changes that affect in somehow their life. Social media has contributed to link parts of this wide world to each other, and paved the way for all people exchange views and ideas. In addition, social media sites are considered the most widespread on the Internet because of its characteristics that made it different from other websites. Because of social media, people has become living in small town. They do not need to travel in order to getting informations or news. Social media has created easier way to achieve communication between individuals and groups.Social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace , High Five, Tagged and YouTube have allowed people to exchange video clips, photos, share files and perform immediate talks and direct communication and interaction between the audience. Despite of advantages of social media that offer to its users, there are some disadvantages that may overcome those advantages. There are a lot of severe criticisms that social media faced because of its negative impact on individuals, families and society. Steal information, break the personal privacy, wasting a lot of time and isolation from people are some of problems that people have faced because of social media. People have divided into two group toward this issue. Some people think that social media has contributed to make their life better.