Firstly, there is no denying the impact that social media has had on almost all of our lives. On a global scale, social media such as Facebook and Twitter was at the epicentre of the Arab Spring and continue to play a significant part in the ongoing uprising in Egypt and surrounding areas. On a personal level people have an unprecedented level of communication that was unthinkable 20 years ago. Social media has provided us with a broad expanse of new opportunities, however how far is too far? I want to pose the question whether or not social media is fundamentally a good thing for all of us.

I myself am an advocate for social media as I believe the benefits far out way the drawbacks, but what are some of the drawbacks? Of course there are some of the superficial reasons such as popularity amongst the younger generations or online bullying etc. however what are the more broader implications.

It is my essential belief that the CIA has been going the entire wrong way about it. Instead of spying on people trying to learn about them with satellites and spending billions and billions of doing so, they could have just set up a little website. They could have given it a catchy name. I don’t know maybe something like Facebook and THEY WOULD GIVE YOU ALL THE INFORMATION FOR FREE!!! Now I’m not trying to imply that the CIA or NSA or whatever are spying on you specifically because they probably don’t care what you’re doing or who you are BFFs with. However it does bring up the issue of privacy. How does this have anything to do with network media? well glad you asked.

All the information you put on to Twitter or Facebook you do not own (ahh the pesky terms and conditions strike again)

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/382786/you-didnt-read-it

This information however can be used to tailor advertising to you specifically. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Probably not right now. Will it get annoying? It most certainly will. All your information will be shared and stored among other companies to create a utopia where privacy is a thing of the past. It may not be here now but its definitely coming and boy is it going to suck.

At this stage we are all too far deep and interconnected with social media to go back now but you’d be silly to think it’s not coming. Facebook and Twitter are companies that want to make a profit, and they will do so by selling advertising, and that advertising will be annoying and lame just like when youtube started doing it.

Now social media is here to stay and I’m glad it is, just remember that your privacy settings aren’t so private.

In honour of this post being about “spying” I give to you 50 reasons why George Lazenby should never have been a Bond and Sean Connery should never have stopped –