Very few people understand the danger that social media has made in our lives, turning it into an open book where information about us can be read not only by our friends but also by enemies. Therefore, it is very naive not to think about possible threats from social networks. When people first learn about social media, they hesitate whether to create a profile or not. Once they have activated their account, they immediately begin to post information and offer their friends to join their circle of friends. Their delight is also fueled by the media, which constantly talks about new products launched on social networks. If you refuse to open an account on social media, your friends will still start sending you invitations.
You can give up and join one social network, two, and three… The benefits of social networking can blind you and make you forget about the dangers lurking in its depths. You come to puppy delight that you can always stay in touch with people who are not indifferent to you. You are impressed by the opportunity to share information, news, photos, and videos with different groups of people of which you are a member. But let’s take a calm look at social networks from the other side. After all, any medal of them, as a rule, too.
We offer you seven main dangers of social media, fraught with social networks. The list can be updated along with how we will continue to use social networks, and they, in turn, will develop in the most unpredictable way together with new technologies.
Privacy concerns
By posting information about yourself on social media, you should be prepared for the fact that it can be seen by a large number of people. As a result, your private life becomes public.
Hacking and password hacking
Even if you take all measures to protect information about yourself from strangers, these attempts, in the end, maybe useless. There are a lot of hacking programs that help to pick up passwords to popular websites and hack them.
Virtual doubles
From time to time, you disclose information about yourself: your date of birth, information about your family, your classes, preferences in literature and cinema, trips that you make, the people with whom you work, the place where you live, and other, other, other. Someone can steal this data, put it together, and create your virtual counterpart.
Internet addiction
Social networking sites can be addictive: they are straightforward to use; they open up to you a whole world of information that is still unknown. Social networks give you the opportunity to express yourself to the whole world. You can many times a day go to their pages on “LinkedIn“, “Twitter“, and Facebook and spend countless hours checking their accounts or just reading about what is happening in the life of your friends. You can spend working time on it and spend less time with family and friends.
To be caught in the camera lens
Imagine the situation: you got drunk at a party and hugged a barely familiar girl. And the next day, your friends or acquaintances spread these “funny” in their opinion photos on the social network and your wife sees them. It may put you in trouble!
Check at work
More and more HR recruiters are using social media to clarify the past of their candidates. You can be a student or work in your current position. And perhaps you have no idea that you will soon be looking for a new job. You don’t care that HR recruiters can view your social media accounts because you are not currently an active job seeker in the job market. But your current pages can be viewed by recruiters in the future when you need a job. Your data may be temporary because you can delete it at any time. At the same time, other people (friends or strangers) can view your data and copy or even save your photos, videos and posts, as well as repost them on their pages. And any information which is too Frank or compromising you can become known to any interested person.
Potential problems in the workplace
You can post information about colleagues or your boss that you think is harmless, but their view of it may be different from yours. Everything can end with the disclosure of confidential information by you, which discredits you in the eyes of the company and will lead to serious consequences. You can post information about yourself, which, in your opinion, has nothing to do with the work. Be that as it may, if you hold a high position, you are not free to post personal information Online. Of course, only if you are not an embodied ideal of the corporate culture. As long as you haven’t joined social media, you can separate your personal life from your work, but your social media activity, contrary to all your desires, still connects them together.
In order not to become dependent on social networks, you should follow some of the recommendations of psychologists who are faced with a new type of addiction in many countries.
First, it is necessary to gradually limit access to social networks. For example: put yourself a clear limit of time spent online. For this purpose, suitable alarm clock, and reminders network friends (ask them to swear at you if you exceed it). The main thing is to gradually reduce the time “sitting” on the social network. It is better to reduce it to two or three minutes a day. Then the difference will be invisible, but you can achieve results in a fairly short period of time.
Secondly, you need to clearly track what you do on social networks. Ruthlessly remove from the list of friends those with whom you do not communicate constantly and whose posts you read only because you are used to doing it. Reading new messages should be reduced to one, a maximum of two times a day. After carrying out the above manipulations, this will be enough. There’s one interesting trick that almost always works. For example, many users of the site “Facebook” complain that they go to the site, but no one greet, determined not to communicate and not to waste time on chatter. But the rest of the visitors see that their friends are online, and greet, start a conversation, and they cannot refuse purely out of politeness, and then a word for word and away. All the efforts and limitations for nothing. There is a way: just force yourself not to go to the site. It’s much easier than being silent while online or explaining to everyone that you’re busy or going through a course of psychotherapy.
Third, think about your health. If you sleep badly, suffer from back pain, wear glasses or lenses, and just imagine how much inconvenience and suffering will disappear from your life. Think about how, in fact, are harmful not only along with the fixed seat, monotonous movements of hands and fingers, a look aimed at one point, a hunched back, and a tight neck but also such a way of life. Surely you go to bed late and get up, a little in the air and do not exercise, eat irregularly and randomly. And the absence of such aspects of your appearance as bags and bruises under the eyes, red proteins, pale complexion, stoop, thinness, or, conversely, obesity, will make you much more attractive and brighter. Plus, lost irritability, fatigue, inattention, as well as indifference to the outside world, are not related to the Internet. And people will reach out to you, giving you the same communication that you were looking for in the Network. To really want to get rid of all the above consequences of sitting in front of the monitor, you need to really realize that for you it is more valuable — health, blooming image and positive, or a thick card in the clinic, always tired look and the train flying directly at you, instead of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Conclusion
The dangers lurking in social networks are more than real. You can get pleasure from the use of social networks but do it deliberately and with caution. Be careful while sharing your personal data with others. Be prepared for the fact that your page may become public at any time. Talk about it with your children and tell them about the possible consequences of rash posting of this or that information or just watch their actions on the network.
And yet, despite all the negative aspects of social networks, we must admit that there is no turning back. And no one can refuse them, because if it is a network for communication, it is very convenient, economical, and practical if, for work and creativity, it seems fast, productive, and useful. What to say; now through the same “Contact” you can rent a house, buy a ticket to a party and order clothes. Through Facebook to gather like-minded people and conduct a survey around the world, and through the “Classmates” to sit, chat with relatives and congratulate everyone on his birthday, giving virtual gifts. Not life, but a fairy tale! Just what she threatens to end, that is the question
