Disadvantages Of Social Media Essay Example

Throughout the growth of technology comes the growth of social media like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. When setting up a social media account, you have to give quite a bit of personal information. Social accounts require your age, phone number, email and much more. When using accounts such as Facebook, your information is made public to anyone who may want to view your account. Also, when giving personal information you are allowing firms access to your data. The amount of loss the public faces due to social accounts is devastating, and there needs to be more laws in place for the public and users safety.

When signing up for these social accounts, people are exited to see what the world and friends are up to not realizing one thing. We are putting our safety in jeopardy and releasing parts of our privacy to the world. When you make accounts such as Facebook, anyone can see your age, where you live, and who your friends with. It is easy to say that anyone can track you down. One time, I knew someone's first name and was able to find where they lived, their age, and their full name, all from their first name. Many people are not aware of the amount of privacy they are releasing when making their account. They are putting their selves and others at risk. There are crazy people who would love to track information on you or your loved ones, no one wants to put their loved ones in danger. Someone could then find where you live and rob you, or they could kidnap you. There are many crazy things that could happen, just from having social media accounts like Facebook. 

If we look deeper into the scope of social media, we realize that these apps abuse their power, Facebook in particular. During the 2016 election, the presidential candidates payed firms to gather information on users on Facebook in hopes to strengthen their chances of winning the election. The firms published an all about you quiz to gather information on these users. A mass majority of Facebook users had taken the quiz, allowing the firms to gather a lot more data. When Facebook realized the actions that these firms had taken, they simply said, do not do that again. Facebook did not have the firms delete the data and make sure they did not use the data for the election.  Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms across the world and this opened a new door for them. In addition to Facebook allowing the firms to gathering information, they did not tell the public of the issue behind the scenes. That means an issue like the firms could reoccur and users would never know. If Facebook allowed the firms to get away with gathering personal data, who knows what else Facebook has allowed. 

In conclusion, social media accounts ask for a lot when setting up accounts, maybe too much. There are many things that could happen for the user or against the user, all because they have a social account. I think that social media accounts should not require so much personal information just to set up an account. I also believe that if they can not help how much personal information they need, there needs to be more laws in place protecting citizens and users public information. Social media is a blessing and a curse, especially during the election. Facebook should require a user agreements to firms who want to put quizzes online. Firms would then, not be allowed to gather information on users. If the government had more laws in place, the users would be safer for all.