We live in a world today that uses social media daily. When we use social media, we might see a variety of behaviors. Some being good, and some just plain bad. The ethical way to use social media can be broken down into three ways. Respect, responsibility, and not invading privacy. These are important to remember because everyone uses social media and for different reasons. Some use it for job oppurtunities, research, entertain, entertainment, and even to release stress. This topic of ethical social media use is an important one because ethics depend on everyone and what they think of it.
On social media, ads are constantly popping up on user's screens. Now these ads are personalized which means that they relate to the user. This is occuring due to the apps ability to track the user's data and information. These apps use cookies, geofencing, and cross-site tracking to navigate and find the most relatable, popular, and viral videos based off your information. This is called data-mining. Though this can be helpful to the user when they are surfing the internet, it can also be harmful due to the information that the company and app has. They could theoretically, misuse that information about you and frame you into some stuff that you didn't even do. Now this is a really extreme example, but things can happen. Issues of privacy can also rise up. If you take a photo and someone's sensitive information is visible, then things can get messy and a dilemma is created. So these are some things that social media can do to your personal information.
Social media isn't just capable of taking your information, it's also capable of being able to decrease mental health and social ability. It turns out that social media isn't really helping people get more social and in fact, it destroys the communication skills between people. Sure it helps you call and communicate with people hundreds of miles away in real time, but other than that, it really doesn't provide much good. Research shows that social media had a negative effect on people's sleep quality, stress, and memory. It can give people fear of missing out (FOMO), depression, anxiety, and makes cheating and plagarising much easier. I think that the social media platforms can use their power for good. If they used their power to block all the bad, destructive, and useless content, then the internet would be a lot more ethical place.
Social media also spreads a lot of information. Now this information can be true, or fake. Now fake information is getting easier to replicate and post and this is a problem. The fake information is sometimes either due to misinformation, tweaking the information, or completely twisting the information to form the user's wants and to attract a lot of views. People can try to combat this problem by trying and finding a reliable known news company such as Fox News, CBS, or BBC. Another way that social media is harmful is the proof that it actually decreases the quality of relationships. This means that when people interact with each other after being on social media for a while, they're quality of speech, they're interest, and they're poise just completely goes away.
These are some of the things that I personally try to follow and remember when I'm on social Media.
