Reader's Response Draft 4

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 has 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 revealing one’s daily life to others, where such revealing acts sometimes can have detrimental effects that turn against oneself. Furthermore, the author believes that in a corporate context, over-sharing can lead to leakage of business information, thus posing a threat to an organization’s survival and profitability. However, there are several steps that social media users can take to reduce vulnerability to threats where Emm suggested in this article.

Social networks have become the main platforms for many people to interact with each other. Yet there are social problems in relation to social media more influential and more prominent than data security issues, which Emm (2014) did not address. Emm talks about risks of manipulating personal data for those who over-share. Besides the chat function, there are many attractive status sharing functions such as checking-in, tagging and liking, which have been manipulated and exploited for unlawful or undesired purposes. Emm (2014) pointed out, for example, revealing one’s current location in a night club with a group of friends by tagging photos or checking-in locations, or making it known to people that one is not at home. Potential criminals who know about the home locations of such a person might 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 shared his home location, and later many angry anti-occupation individuals surrounded his home and threatened his mother’s safety. From this, it is inevitable that Internet data can be stored indefinitely and it would be manipulated. Therefore, stressing the urgency and importance of protection on personal data by reducing the information shared.

Over-sharing might 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 the public the internal view of offices. This is undesired since many firms are unwilling to impart any impressions other than marketed advertisements to the public. The public might be skeptical about the reliability of a company since sharing photos from a workplace 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, from which certain technologies can easily encode the actual information. Hackers only need small pieces of information to access a company’s databases, thus resulting in leakage of business information. In all, simple actions such as posting online could create unimaginable potential risks, which could be leveraged and resulting in losses. Though the strict Internet access control and protocol of use of technology could effectively curb sharing in work places by implementing a blockade of social networking sites, the seriousness of undesired outcomes by over-sharing still needs to be emphasized, especially in work places.

At the same time, more prominent social problems are found related to over-sharing in social media, which has become a bigger concern of many families. In order to gain recognition of who we are and what we do, many people, especially teenagers, 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 jeopardize their verbal communication skills. If teenagers believe that self-esteem and recognition are gained only by sharing, such wrong world views could lead to potential mental health problems. Klein (2014) pointed out that 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 cases reflect the consequences of oversharing on the Internet, and subsequent intake of information without any guidance and filter. Greenberg (2013) also discovered 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 might gradually transform users to become socially awkward since they become 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.

References

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. Huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 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? Huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/social-media-mental-health_n_5268108.html