Reader Response Draft 3

According to the article “The Perils of Over-sharing in Social Networks” by Emm (2014), Internet security has effects on many aspects in our lives. Many people feel uncomfortable about being monitored by authorities. Since the Internet has become an integral part of our lives, this made us susceptible to threats due to high accessibility of personal data. Emm emphasized that posting on social media has more detrimental effects than simply showing to others, where it sometimes can be used for evidence of unfavorable outcomes. Furthermore, the author believes that in a corporate context, over-sharing can lead to leakage of business information thus posing a threat to organizations’ survival and profitability. However, there are several steps that everyone can take to reduce vulnerability to threats.

Social networks have become the main platforms for many people to interact with each other. Yet there are social problems more influencing and more prominent than data security issues, where Emm (2014) did not address.

Emm talks about risks of manipulating personal data for those who over-shares. Besides chatting, there are many fancy status sharing functions such as checking-in, tagging and liking, have been manipulated and exploited for unlawful or undesired purposes. For example, revealing one’s current location in night club with a group of friend by tagging photos or checking-in locations, making one known to people that he or she is not at home. Some who got to know their home locations would pay a secret visit, resulting in burglaries and even robberies in real life cases. Hong Kong’s Occupy Central movement student protest leader Joshua Wong had previously shared his home location, where later many anti-occupation angered individuals surrounded his home and threatened his mother’s safety. As such, Internet data that can be stored indefinitely would be manipulated and therefore, stressing the urgency and importance of protection on personal data by reducing the information shared.

Over-sharing will also jeopardize work confidentiality and sometimes even reliability. Office workers who share their office views will expose their work place location, structures and layouts, revealing to public the internal scenery of offices. This is undesired since many firms are unwilling to impart any impressions other than marketed advertisements to the public. Public might be skeptical about the reliability of a company since sharing in work place does not seem professional at all. Furthermore, many would end a day’s hard work by uploading a photo with their work desk at the background. Some could be unaware of the stack of files and papers behind, where technologies can easily encode the actual information. Hackers only need small pieces of information to access company’s databases and thus resulting in leakage of business information. In all, simple actions such as posting online could have unimaginable potential risks, where they could be leveraged as evidences in resulting in losses. Nevertheless, strict Internet access control and protocol of use of technology could effectively curb sharing in work places by implementing blockade of social networking sites. Yet, the seriousness of undesired outcomes by over-sharing still needs to be emphasized especially in work places.

However, more prominent social problems are found related to over-sharing in social media which became bigger concerns by many families. In order to gain recognition in who we are and what we do, people especially teenager over-share to gain attention from online friends. Greenberg (2013) believes that teens should learn to be in the moment by interacting face-to-face with peers, instead of sharing everything online that could jeopardy their verbal communication skills. If teenagers believe that self-esteem and recognition are gained only by sharing, such wrong world views would lead to potential mental health problems. Klein (2014) mentioned about a girl who committed suicide after getting obsessed with taking selfies, and also cases where increasing number of teenagers engage in drug use and violence, these reflect the outcomes if people over-rely on SNS. Greenberg also believes that online social platforms are exclusive places for users themselves that they have very limited opportunities to interact with others. Over-reliance as a result of over-sharing on online platforms would gradually transform users to become socially awkward since he or she is used to sharing information online instead of in real life.

In all, the author provides an insight of dangers arise from over-sharing. Besides personal and corporate data risks, the society should also be more aware of detrimental social problems that could harm everyone who uses social networks.

734 words 

Emm, D. (2014). The perils of over-sharing in social networks. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/david-emm/the-perils-of-over-sharing-in-social-networks_b_5005276.html.

Greenberg, B. (2013, June 20). 8 Problems with Teens and Social Media. Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-greenberg/8-problems-with-teens-social-media_b_3472816.html

Klein, S. (2014, May 7). Is Social Media Dependence A Mental Health Issue? Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/social-media-mental-health_n_5268108.html