Everyone has heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”. With social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat that are easy for everyone to use and send your photos in well…. a snap, that saying is more relevant now than ever. Since smartphones have sky rocketed to popularity, almost everyone (especially young people) has a camera with him or her everywhere they go, making everyone seem like a photographer.
Gone are the days of letter writing and landline calls, with billions of active users, people are literally documenting their lives via pictures posted on today’s popular social networks. As a college student, and a frequent participant in this online photo-sharing craze, I began to ponder these questions… how does this generation’s obsession with photo sharing effect the lives and self image of young people worldwide? If posting and viewing photos is as easy as a click of a mouse, how safe is it really?
There is no doubt that quick and easy photo sharing has many benefits. No one leaves the house without their phone nowadays and luckily, our cameras come along too. So more once in a lifetime moments are being capture. In a sense, everyone is able to report the news.
Likewise, sharing photos via the worldwide web allows us to share our lives with people that are hundreds of miles away or even across the globe. Now, not only can you call your parents and tell them about your new friends and experiences in college, you can show them. You certainly can’t put a price on the amount of memories and special moments that are being captured and shared and online photo sharing has that made that possible.
However, the photo sharing features on social networks have also had quite a negative effect on today’s youth. It is a common practice amongst young people to design their lives on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. One of the best and worst qualities about social networks is that you can choose what you post. So, we can display our lives in anyway we want. People often select and edit their pictures to make their life appear more glamorous than it actually is. Teens especially want to seem like they wear they wear the best clothes, go to the best parties and have the most friends. In turn, social networking and the pictures we post become a way to compare ourselves to our peers.
In an article written by a teen girl for the Huffington Post, she states “People become addicted to the high they get when someone acknowledges them on these websites. Social media quickly evolves to be a popularity contest, where the losers are punished with self-doubt and a constant reminder of their failure.”
As a result, the confidence of many young Facebook users decreases dramatically. As the common saying describes, we compare our “behind the scenes” to everyone else’s “highlight reel”. Teens are thinking about themselves in a negative light and comparing that self-image to their peer’s most glamorous (and often fabricated) moments. The results can be devastating and difficult to escape.
Not only can Internet photo sharing kill your confidence; it can also be dangerous. Posting photos online can be an agent of deception, a concept brought into the spotlight by the new, hit show Catfish which airs on MTV, where normal, everyday people form a close relationship with someone they have only met on Facebook, only to realize the person they have been chatting with does not match the picture on their profile. These people, and even the popular Notre Dame Football star Manti Te’o, essentially fell in love with a person that does not exist.
Unfortunately, the number of cases of people’s Facebook photos being stolen and used for other purposes has increased dramatically. According to Kimberly Palmer in an article for usnews.com, a mother in Florida discovered that a photo she had posted of her five year-old on Facebook was taken and used to create a new profile without her knowledge.
The drastic increase in people posting photos from mobile devices, like smartphones, has introduced a new danger. These devices, and many others, contain GPS technology. As a result, photos posted from these devices often contain tags that reveal the location of the device, and thus, the location of the person. So anyone that views your photo, knows where you are.
In addition, the photos you post on social networks now can also endanger your future. More and more employers and not only conducting face-to-face interviews and reviewing applications, but also they are also looking over the facebooks of their current and prospective employees. So those photos you posted of the not-so-responsible decisions you made over the weekend may just end up in the hands of your boss.
So what’s the answer? Just close our Facebook and Twitter accounts and deny ourselves the pleasure of social networking and sharing our lives? Of course not. Social networks have so many good things to offer and we should enjoy them to their full potential. After all, I am no more willing to give up my Facebook account then the next person. But what we can do is do everything in our power to protect ourselves. And when I say protect ourselves I mean in every way. Our lives, our minds, our self-esteem, and our integrity. So to help avoid these dangers I offer these simple pieces of advice to all of you and myself:
Check your privacy settings: Know who you are allowing to view your personal information and your photos and disable the GPS settings on your phone before you post a photo.
Log off. Don’t let social networking and posting and view photos become an addiction. Give yourself a break. Just because your friends have posted photos of their wild weekend doesn’t mean you have to view them.
Keep in mind that the photos you see on social networks display people at their best. Remember that everyone has bad days, and everyone trades in their makeup and high heels for jeans and a T-shirt sometimes.
Before you post a photo ask yourself… Will it be ok if my boss sees this photo? My future children? My parents?
The convenience and fun of online photo sharing is undeniable, but the dangers are very real. Trying to follow these rules and keeping these things in mind can make your Internet photo-sharing experiences more enjoyable and much safer.
Bridget Goedke
Viewpoints Correspondent