In late 2011, I was overwhelmed to see another new layout created by Facebook, the timeline. Sure, I had a moment of laughter when I saw some of posts I posted when I was in grade eight. But, something felt disturbingly uneasy; Facebook had been storing the complete summary of my entire life since birth.
I feel that increasingly as people post photos and their thoughts in Facebook, they are constantly advertising themselves in the realm of the social media. We are allowing strangers to see whom we are through personal profile including our display photos, what we like, which places we recently visited, what groups we are associated with…etc. All the things that meant to be kept personal.
Why is Facebook continually changing the layout of the website and trying to advertise individual Facebook users to the best ability they can? Facebook not only advertises us to unknown strangers, but is also a tool that could threaten and put some people in dangerous situations. Increasingly, I hear many tragic stories of teenagers because of Facebook and seeing it drastically grow, they scare me.
We are surrounded by “cyberculture” and its values and norms include the “culture of openness, knowledge sharing, and access” (Ritzer and Guppy, 2014, p.146). In an online environment such as Facebook, our lives are absorbed, as we are constantly in touch with the posts of photos, videos, the likes and comment. We are integrating our reality aspect of life into the social life through our constant engagement with social media.
I enjoy being on Facebook, I get to see photos of my high school friends who are now in different places around the world. Its always handy to see what our friends are uptp. But my point goes back to Allison’s post on Facebook (thanks Allison!), I will spend my time on Facebook and other social networking sites “intentionally”, not just for entertainment purposes but viewing information and questioning myself “how much of personal information that I trust be posted in an online public setting such as the Facebook?