An online social media presence is, in my eyes, seemingly
inescapable to anybody living in the modern world. One can’t just make the
personal and professional, formal and informal, connections through face to
face communication alone anymore. As social media giants have boomed over the
last couple decades, everybody has created some sort of online identity. It’s
not just something we do recreationally; it’s become something we need for
human connection, whether it be to find information on Google and Twitter, update
our friends and family on Instagram and Facebook, or reach out to employers on
LinkedIn or Indeed. So, although it has been said over and over again, it is
important to be introspective with your online presence to see what others
could learn from it. So, I will be examining my own online presence in this
blog post.
Personally, I don’t tend to put out a large amount of
personal information or content on my social media. The social media sites I
use are predominately Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Twitter is where I am
predominately when I am using social media, as I use Twitter an average of 5-6
hours more often per week than my second highest used social media. While
Twitter is where I use social media the most, I don’t really post anything personal
or provide any private information on there. Most of my time is spent scrolling
through my timeline, checking the news, retweeting things I find interesting or
noteworthy, and privately communicating with friends. 
The same goes for my
usage of snapchat and Instagram. I’d have to say I’m a fairly unique Instagram
user, as I haven’t posted my face in any of my previous posts. I also rarely
post to begin with, as it’s been nearly 2 years since I’ve last posted. I
mostly have it just to keep track of how my friends from high school are doing.
The same goes for Snap Chat, which I mostly use just to communicate with
friends. Like Instagram, I rarely post publicly, and when I do, I never show my
face or give my location. So, if someone were to glean at any of my social
media pages, they’d really only find that I post a lot about the current world
of sports, and that I’m interested in pop culture news surrounding movies and
television series.
The same goes for my
usage of snapchat and Instagram. I’d have to say I’m a fairly unique Instagram
user, as I haven’t posted my face in any of my previous posts. I also rarely
post to begin with, as it’s been nearly 2 years since I’ve last posted. I
mostly have it just to keep track of how my friends from high school are doing.
The same goes for Snap Chat, which I mostly use just to communicate with
friends. Like Instagram, I rarely post publicly, and when I do, I never show my
face or give my location. So, if someone were to glean at any of my social
media pages, they’d really only find that I post a lot about the current world
of sports, and that I’m interested in pop culture news surrounding movies and
television series.
One of the largest social media brands that I don’t use is
Facebook. I technically have an account, but I’ve only ever really used it for
some certain classes I’ve taken. I’ve never personalized my account or posted
anything of real substance on it before. Originally, I didn’t “get-in” to
Facebook because it seemed like the social media brand for adults and parents
who want to check in to see how their old classmates from high school are
doing. I also felt like I had enough social media presence as is. With Twitter,
Instagram, and Snapchat, I can really connect with anyone I’ve already met. No
need for another one. Then, when I discovered the news of the Facebook and
Cambridge Analytica Data scandal, where the Cambridge Analytica firm provided
the personal information data of millions of Facebook accounts to politicians
in exchange for a quick buck and saw all the bad publicity Facebook received
for misusing and crossing lines with their customer’s personal data, it sort of
cemented the idea in my head that Facebook just wasn’t worth it.
With that said, it does make me think about my usage with
other accounts like Twitter and Instagram. I mean, just because Facebook got so
publicly caught with their blatant data usage doesn’t mean they are the only
ones who do so. Just a quick google search can show that other social media’s
have their own fair share of privacy issues, like Twitter’s leak
of Ip addresses containing users’ phone numbers back in 2018. Same goes for
Instagram
just last year. For some reason, I thought just because I didn’t use
Facebook, I wouldn’t have to worry about my privacy. However, all social media
brands seem to have this common issue, so I’m not completely safe just because
I don’t use Facebook that much. I mean, I have my full name, and email, and my
phone number attached to my Twitter. What’s stopping some hacker or leak from
exposing my personal data there? It makes me think that if I really wanted true
privacy ad security, I’d have to go out of my way to remove myself from all
social media accounts.
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