Having the police think you are an American spy is fun. The police stopping you in the street to make sure you are registered seems adventurous. Police banging on your apartment door, checking your registration and then investigating whether or not you are part of a crime that occured is intimidating. Picking up your phone and hearing the police tap your phone line is scary. While living in a small rural town in a snow covered Russia, I found myself in these situations, wondering what happened to my privacy. I then thought about home, here in the United States of America, where a person's privacy is theirs and not impeded upon by any force. Or is it?
New media technologies have brought change to privacy. GPS, social networking sites, cell phones and even the use of government security cameras on the streets all are developed from new technology and is infringing on personal privacy. While most of these can be avoided, in the fast paced world of adapting to new technology we are very suseptable to losing what is most important to us. Or do we freely give our privacy away?
Posting pictures, giving personal information and giving constant updates are the heart and soul of social networking sites. Appearing to be clean fun, the use of these sites puts you and everything you and your 'friends' say about you on the world wide web for all to see. Is that privacy? Knowing this, why do people still do it? Watch this video about privacy and social networking sites.
People want to feel connected, feel like they are a part of something big, or just keep in touch with friends and meet new people. While this is all solved by partaking in social networking sites, it leads to self disclosure of privacy. Due to a popularity in these networking sites, people are drawn in, and then they feel they need to openly follow and do whatever they seem is needed to stay up with what is new and happening.
Yes, I am on Facebook. When I joined a couple years ago, I was leary of joining it because I did not want to be part of a site like Myspace. My friends ensured me that it was not at all like it, and that only college students with college based email addresses could join and be part of it. I look now and see how Facebook has unfortunetly evolved into something just like Myspace.
Ever been on that date when all the sudden you feel your cell phone vibrating, and as you look over towards your date you see their expression that they hear it going off? Cellular phones have been very helpful in connecting people, maybe sometimes too much. While social networking sites are seen as the bigger privacy invader it turns out cell phones actually make the largest impact on your loss of privacy. Check out this article on cell phones and its invasion on your privacy.
It seems as if you can never get away from being connected to someone, and that somehow a person is going to get a hold of you. At work, school, on a date, sleeping, in the bathroom, etc., we willingly put ourselves susceptible to this privacy invading technology. While it may come off as being useful, in the long run it destroys the freedom of peace and privacy we deserve.
How much further will this development in giving up our privacy occur? Should we hold back on technological advancements until society can decide and deal with the engaging situations we now face? I dunno. Will I continue to add pictures to my Facebook page? You better believe it. Now, next time I go on a date, should I turn my cell phone off...
I agree with your argument that people are willing to give up their privacy for socialization and "new hot thing". I see this all the time with Facebook. People have no problem displaying and posting personal information (age, religious views, pictures of themselves, who they are in a relationship with, hobbies) on their site where normally they would not give this kins of information to strangers or people they just met. Wy do people feel like they re safer presenting these things on the internet when they have a better change of having more privacy in the real world rather than cyberspace space? To me it seems like people would rather be doing the new cool thing (like Facebook becoming the new social network after MySpace became a place to advertise your crappy band and post fake advertisements to sell Viagra and male enhancement pills to all your friends, including the females on your friends list)than keep their privacy.
ReplyDeleteWhy are people so willing to sacrifice their privacy when thee are countries where people have no say in what they want to keep private or not? I found your story about being in Russia very interesting and you made a valid argument that got me thinking about this. Do you think that people would still be so willing to give up privacy for socialization if they knew how open and revealing the internet is to personal information. I think that, for the most part, the majority of people who use these social network sites and spend the most time on them are unaware of how vulnerable they are and how they do not have as much privacy as they think. Would knowing this information result in not as many people using social networks, or would they just not care? After all we are all just friends on Facebook, what harm could your friends do to you?...
I also agree that many of us are willing to sacrifice our privacy for the benefits of technology and participating in the latest trends and inventions, but why? There really isn't a good reason for it. Some people do disclose more than their fair share of information that can not only compromise their security, but their privacy.
ReplyDeleteWe are creating online and tech identities and it presents problems... I mean what if someone hacks into your social networking profile and carries on with a fake representation of your life online? These things happen and we aren't protected. It's also interesting to point out that these web sites interest is to bring in their own profit and they are also free so how much time will they spend to truly safeguard our information. Enough so we don't leave, but how much?
Enoch, I think your idea of us being the ones taking the privacy away from ourselves is interesting. I had not really thought about it like that before. I think when we post pics on facebook, have blogs that have our personal opinions, etc, that we are allowing our most private feelings and opinions to be out there for almost anyone to see and read.
ReplyDeleteI think that is the very reason why I had not started a facebook page before this class. I did not want my high school friends or anyone to know what I was doing unless I wanted them to know...which I know you can make your page private but people know other people and it will eventually get out.
So I think your idea of us being more careful or what we post is a good idea, but how many of us will actually do that?
Interesting experience you shared about living in Russia.
ReplyDeleteI think that you bring up very valid points. Much of our privacy today is given out with no thoughts of what may or may not happen to the information. I know that for myself I give out a lot more information than I think I do. For example by twittering my location or what I am up to, I am asking for anyone to come talk to me, follow me, or possibly harm me.
Perhaps it is our generation that believes there really is no privacy in the world, and so we do not think about it.
My grandparents would hide their journals or checkbooks behind bricks in their homes to prevent anyone finding out personal information, but today, we have the last 4 digits of credit cards on every receipt, and blog about our lives.
In the end, we give up privacy only to have the shiny technologies that we think will make life easier, even if we have to give some things about us up.
I totally agree with sacrificing our privacy to stay connected! I am guilty of it as well. Although I know what could happen with all my information being seen on the web in the present or the future, I continue to be part of the social phenomenon that is facebook and myspace, and I don't know why. I feel if I wasn't, I would be missing out on a part of our generation that has become almost a cult. Plus, I love seeing everyone's new pictures and constant and pointless updates of people's lives :)
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that you say it feels like we can never be away from being connected and I totally agree with that. We have our lap tops our cell phones our desktops it seems to never end. It all goes a long the lines of where do we draw the line, when is it actually crossed? Does society make these lines or do we make them ourselves? When you explain how you first joined Facebook for certain reasons and now it has evolved, I Think all of us do that. We join something or get involved because it is one way, then it begins to be something different, but most of the time we join in on the different or changes that are happening as well. It is a blurry concept of what people will and won't do for privacy or what they consider privacy.
ReplyDeleteYe being connected is just now a way of life. I was reluctant to join facebook just like you but now I am on facebook constantly because I want to see whats going on when and where. I don't know if i ever want to be totally away from my technology. I know for a fact I can't live without it. I know if I am missing my cell phone I feel naked. I can't stage not knowing if I missed a text message or a phone call, it drives me nuts. The technology isn't perfect yet but over time the security issues that people worry about will be fixed. I was finishing high school before the whole text message craze really took off and I have a hard time thinking how I lived without it. The only question is now, is what is coming next?
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