Do YOU Truly have Ownership of Yourself?

Social media and the online world can essentially control one's life, and in addition, can own the personal data of the platform's users. The government can have access to your search history without a warrant resulting in personal information and interests being discovered with ease. Any pictures or other personal information someone posts on the internet can be copied and used for exploitive or nefarious reasons.  Privacy settings should always be used and personal information should only be shared with great caution, or someone’s personal identity could ultimately be stolen. 

Social media allows people to follow their friends and stay up to date with news and connect to people around the world. However, sometimes it can be used for detrimental reasons. For example, through social media people can commit blackmail, extortion, or cyberbullying, causing victims to lose money, lose credibility, and even hurt themselves. 

These issues can affect me because even when I take the most recommended steps to secure privacy, there is still a level of risk in using social media platforms. Even though what I text to my friends through a social media website or app is supposed to be private, the information is still stored and can be hacked into. I have experienced my Instagram account being hacked, which resulted in everyone I follow receiving a direct message pretending to be me when it was not. 

One of the videos presented during class dealt with how our phones listen to us when we talk or track what we search for on Google Chrome or Safari. One can reasearch something or say something to someone and a few moments later whatever the topic was may show up in a post or an ad on your feed. One instance that I remember this happening to me occurred when I was with my friend Mitchell talking about his favorite team, the Washington Nationals. I never have Nationals media on my feed but five minutes after Mitchell and I talked about the team, a post showed up about it.  We then purposely talked about another team, and the same thing happened.