I, like all of you, am not so sure anymore about what should be completely private in the social media age. Even those with professional pages on Facebook are blurring the lines between their personal and professional lives. So what are we to do with blurry eyes? Do we simply give up what we once held sacred or do we try to reach for greater levels of privacy among a not-so-private way of communicating? Who is seeing our information anyway?
So far, it seems that we have three main privacy “leaks” – what we see, what our friends see, and what Facebook sees. The third point being the most risky for those of us wanting more control over what we share. It makes sense that one of the reasons why Facebook’s privacy settings keep changing is because marketers and advertisers all want access to the consumer Holy Grail: our demographics, our ages, how many children we have, where we live, what topics we search for, and most importantly where we shop.
Privacy on Facebook seems like a double-edged sword: The more we share the more we want to protect. Yet, the more time we spend on social media sites, the more we become accustomed to sharing more of ourselves. We all know this but few of us stop sharing personal information and even fewer get off of Facebook. We judge people if they do. Think about it – how would you feel if someone you interacted with regularly got off Facebook entirely? The social pressure keeps us going yet many of us do not realize (or care) how much we are becoming involved with our online identity.
