Social Networking Sites

Social media is a very scary place, I know social networking is great, you meet new people  and connect with communities which have similar interest to you. There is so many options to make your page and site your own and let people know who you are. It opens the world to you behind a small screen. However, as great as those social networking sites are, there is a very scary part to it, which I will be discussing comparing those four social networking sites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. All those social networking site has a very scary commonality, which is picture and video sharing. Now sharing pictures online is very common, but have you ever wondered how many people have access to your pictures and media. Facebook on one hand started of as a way to connect with old friends and colleagues who you may have lost touch with. But now all of us are basically adding new people whenever we get a friend request. Sometimes it is very necessary to check who you add. As well as that most people have their Instagram connected to their Facebook account. When you add someone on Facebook, they get connected to your Instagram page. Instagram is set up as a social media of pictures. People on a daily bases adding pictures and videos on that app. Now , on the other hand, Twitter also has a way to share pictures but people use that networking site to discuss topics and follow other people, but that doesn’t mean people often don’t use Twitter to share their pictures. Your profile picture on Twitter is your picture, cough I don’t use my real picture there. Then there is Snapchat, which was advertised as chats with pictures, again the word pictures.

If the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is true; then why are we letting strangers’ access to a thousand words about ourselves. It is so easy to make a fake profile using someone else’s picture. All you need to do is gather someone’s picture from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, (if you are lucky enough to access that.). Then open a fake profile in any networking sites. Add their pictures then add a bunch of people and wait for them to follow you. Thus, you have someone else’s identity as your profile. And if you don’t want to get caught, block the original account and their followers. The world of catfishing is finally open to you.

I am not saying that one shouldn’t share their pictures but, I think you need to be cautious about who has access to you.  In the past, I used to add random people on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, thank god I was not dumb enough to do that on snapchat. But now after an incident that happened to a close friend of mine whose identity was stolen; I take great cautious on who I add online. I went through my Instagram and Facebook deleting pages where it seemed like it was a robot or someone I didn’t know. I know my blog may be a bit dark, but it is a messed-up part of Social media and one must also address the bad as well as the good.