In 2017 when someone asks what a person's opinion on social media is you generally get the same response. They inevitably say, "While social media does have a lot of pros there are just as many cons.". So why is everyone so split on the idea of social media and how has it affected us as a society? Well just from personal experience I've seen relationships start through talking on social media such as Twitter just to have this same relationship latter end simply due to a like on an app like Instagram. To quote a friend, "The internet gives just as much as it takes away.". We live in a world where we are being monitored 24 hours a day. Not only by friends and family but multi million dollar companies now caring about what we search for and say on the internet. Now this observation is nothing new nor is it groundbreaking. Much smarter people than me have already done studies and given their opinion on social media's impact on our world. Just look at Jennifer Golbeck's TED talk in which she talks about the trends of social media as well as giving a story of a young girl being exposed as pregnant due to Target seeing her search history, social media posts, and recent purchases. This story really put things into perspective for me. How when we say something to a group of friends we think of it as safe or private. This mentality carries over to social media but is clearly not the case in today's world where anything anyone says or does can be seen by millions of people. I think this new found carefulness has put most social media users on edge leading to a kind of fatigued in terms of having to deal with the internet and more specifically social media. So we find ourselves at a strange crossroads: do we change the way we act and hide our personal lives from companies and strangers? Or do we put our entire lives online, where we are, who we are with, what we are doing, and think that nothing bad could come out of it? If we look at Golbeck's story It seems the decision has already been made.
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