Social Media: A Double-Edged Sword

I, like anyone from my generation, am part of a (or two, or maybe three?) social networking site. It's been the most major way of communication in this era, and I'll be darned to be the only one not using it. It's just an added perk that it makes talking to your relatives living across the oceans that much easier. But, as the internet does make things easier, it also makes things more open, more public. This very blog post would be connected to my name and seen by everyone who looks it up forever (well, maybe less than forever).

Definitely, along with our address, school,
and deepest, darkest secrets

On our FB accounts, we have these things called our privacy settings. It's where we regulate exactly who can see the information we put on Facebook. Now, I haven't been to Facebook in a long, long time, but I rarely checked that tab when I did. I do know that my account was open to everyone, and that they could know my full name, my birthday (sans year, I think), which school I go to and how I look like, even where I went to last summer vacation! Pretty scary, now that I think about it.

I don't post anything much, actually (the main reason I went to Facebook was for the games). Even when I was active, I only posted some photos, mostly for relatives-in-another-country reasons. I don't post anything about things I should really keep to myself like, oh I don't know, a guilty pleasure (really, that's the farthest I could go)?

Of course, with this much danger lurking in the darkest corners of the Internet, we should really be responsible with what we post. Literally everyone in the world could see what we post, know things about us that only our friends and family should and, to a much worse extent, something confidential related to money. As sites have always warned us before we sign up, we should never, ever give out personal information to others on the Internet, because behind a computer screen could be anyone.