Dangers of Social Media

     Hundreds of millions of people use social media and new media sites. Most of them go about their day checking their status updates or most recent tweet from one of the many people they follow. Everything seems great, that is until they notice that their bank account is suddenly drained dry. Most of us continue on with our day until something does happen to us, and that is when we finally realize that maybe these social media sites are not as safe as we once believed.

     Social media sites may seem harmless but in reality they are just another place for criminals to target their prey. So many people are clueless to what they may be putting up onto these sites, all the personal information they may be reveling. This is dangerous because a profile can easily be hacked, giving the hacker a lot of information about their target and they can easily fall victim to scams that damage both their computers and bank accounts. Nearly 81 percent of all internet crimes are somehow related to social media sites (Erin). With such a high volume of people using these sites it makes them easy targets.

     Not only is your information at risk from potential hackers but let’s not forgot about your physical well being. Say a potential burglar or rapist gains access to your information, they now have your whereabouts. 78 percent of burglars use social media platforms to find houses that may be empty for the taking. They do this by finding out your name and town that you live in from a social media site and then the internet can easily provide them with your address. With your address at their disposal and your status update about how excited you are to be on vacation at the beach, they know have the window and information they need to pull this heinous act off (Erin).

     What's even scarier is the fact that 33 percent of internet-initiated sex crimes happen through social media. In 50 percent of sex crime cases involving minors, the offender got the information about the victim through their social profiles (Erin). Many underage people post so much information without even realizing the information they put up on the sites can put them in danger.

     All in all there are a lot of dangers involving social media sites. The only sure fire way to avoid all these dangers is but just staying off social media all together. Just like abstinence and sex, we all know it’s the only way to avoids STD’s and child birth 100 percent, but let’s face it, we don’t care. So the next best step to take is to familiarize yourself with the social media sites that you are on. Learn about the security and privacy settings and use them to your advantage to minimize the chances of your information being leaked out. Think before you post, you don’t want to share with the whole world that you are going on vacation or going to be out of town for a couple of days. Lastly if you are a parent, make sure to keep an eye on what your kids may be sharing and posting. It is crucial that social media users of all ages protect themselves from the harm and danger that may be lurking out there (Erin).

Works Cited:

Erin, Adrienne. "Reality check: your social media use maybe putting you in danger." AL.com. N.p., 24 Mar. 2014. Web. . <http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/03/reality_check_your_social_medi.html>.

Death Be to MySpace

Believe it or not, there was a time where Facebook did not reign supreme in the world of social media. Those of us that were tech savvy and a part of the social media world remember a time before Facebook where we all had a MySpace. MySpace as we all know eventually died but why did it die and just why are we all okay with it being gone.

MySpace was a trail blazer but as in most cases it’s not who is first but instead who perfected it. Henry Ford didn't invent the first automobile but he did perfect it. MySpace may have made the first major platform for social media but Facebook came along and perfected it. MySpace laid the foundation but Facebook came along and organized it and made it more appealing to the masses, made it more user friendly for everyone to enjoy. MySpace has lost over forty million unique visitors per month, lost both co-founders, laid off the vast majority of its staff and more generally, has diminished to a cluttered afterthought of the power it once was (Lee).

Another one of MySpace’s failing points was it was unable to keep up with the ever evolving web. This is where Facebook excelled and gave the people what they wanted and left MySpace in the dust wondering how to catch up. MySpace was created by people in the entertainment industry and was music based at first as opposed to the founders of Facebook who were more tech savvy. It was easier for people to connect with friends via Facebook as it was MySpace. Also in my personal opinion Facebook was more genuine at first whereas MySpace was already flooded with fake profiles and internet creeps. MySpace began to get flooded with young high schoolers who as young high schoolers are were very immature. Facebook was a breath of fresh air to get away from the staleness that MySpace had become.

Once you fall behind it is only common that you will try and catch up. This catch up process is also what laid waste to MySpace. In a effort to catch up to Facebook and try and do something new that wasn’t done yet, MySpace tried to create every feature as opposed to focusing on a couple new features and doing them well. This is an admitted mistake by former founder Chris DeWolfe because of trying to accomplish so much and not focusing on the little things, a majority of these new features were buggy and dysfunctional (Lee).

The final down fall of MySpace was its lack of revenue building as compared to Facebook. I remember MySpace in my later years as a user that the site was just flooded with advertisements that didn’t pertain to anything. They just became an eye sore. Facebook has its advertisements but they organized them in a way where they did not take away from the product. They also were geared towards the user based on the pages and products the user would like. All in all researcher Danah Boyd compared user migration from MySpace to Facebook and began referring to MySpace as the “digital ghetto” as to where Facebook became a safe haven for more elite users (Lee).

With everything accounted for I believe that MySpace just became outdated. As brought up in the beginning normally the first to introduce something are not the ones that last but more the ones that come along later and perfect it as it was with Reddit and Digg. The reason why I believe we are better off without MySpace is because we already do have Facebook and so many other forums of social media such as Instagram and Twitter that there just isn’t room for MySpace anymore.  There isn’t any more telling of a fact than that MySpace originally sold for $580 million in 2009 and recently sold for $35 million -- $65 million less than what they were asking for and over $500 million less than what News Corp had originally paid. We can all thank MySpace for what they brought us with social media but I think it’s about time for them to bow out and exit stage left.

Works Cited:

Lee, Amy. MySpace Collapse: How The Social Network Fell Apart. Huffington Post. page<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/30/how-myspace-fell-apart_n_887853.html>. Web. 30 June 2011.