Online Presence

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Does Facebook Know Too Much?As we go further and further into the digital age, I think that it's really important to consider what you do online and how it impacts your life. One can reasonable assume that if you are going to put something online, that the information is going to be used and/or monetized at some point. The more time I spend online, the more intense the targeted advertising becomes, and I can't imagine at this point how someone who wasn't trained in Communication/Advertising could possibly make sense of it all at this point.

In terms of my own online presence, I'd say that it's fairly average but soon to increase, whether this will be a good or bad thing yet I suppose only time can tell. I'm currently working on a personal website, I have accounts with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Youtube, and probably more that I've forgotten about from years ago. I think that especially for young people, the it's really important to consider the fact that we will likely have an online presence our entire lives. Already we see how this information can be used against people (some for good reason, others are often blown out of proportion, i.e. "cancel culture"), and who knows how this information will be used in the future. Most of my social media contains fairly "normal" posts, but they certainly contain a decent amount of personal information. I always found it interesting that especially when I was younger, people would tell you to not give out personal information online. What they obviously meant was to random strangers, but I think it's worth noting that the internet doesn't really work for most people unless you give it your personal information. You can certainly to go lengths to use a fake name, number, etc... but there is still your IP address and whatever information can be mined out of your interactions throughout various websites. We are so quick to give away our personal information to businesses in exchange for a coupon in our inboxes, but it's not really clear what the future repercussions of doing this sort of thing will be besides the millions of instances of online fraud, stolen identity, etc...

I do think that Facebook and other social media sites can have a potential to cause depression, isolation, and loneliness, as well as potential narcissism, due to the nature of how self-affirming it is. It shows the content it think you want to see, and the more unrealistic things you ask it to show you, the more it will do exactly that. People get upset when their online expectation does not match their physical reality, or they forget to be in the physical reality all together.

I think overall, it's essential that we consider what resources we give to "the internet" whether it be our information or our time.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/

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