A Times Square of Your Peers and Misinformation

   Social media has progressed well beyond any other medium so quickly. Social media can be used by anyone with internet access which in today’s world is fairly common now. Now, you may not even need internet access if you have a smart device. You are able to access social media just by using your cell phone carrier service. It isn't limited to the home now, it can be anywhere. 

   Social media itself can only be as intrusive as you want it to be. You have very much control over what you put online and how you interact with others. You can make your accounts as public or private as you desire. What you put out there isn't just magically appearing; it's all under your control. In the late 2000's and early 2010's, social media wasn't egging you on to more information about you as much as it is now. Social media is a business now, they need to sell advertisement space and has become no different than being in the center of Times Square talking to all your peers from college and high school. These platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. all take a look at who and what you're following in order to specify ads tailored to you which in turn makes a profit for them. It's become less about connecting with others and now has become trying to sell each other on something. 

   Responsibility online is a tough call to make. There's the obvious you shouldn't put things out there to put yourself or others in danger or trouble. Inevitably it won’t matter because you can very easily erase an online presence or one day technology will evolve past the use of the internet and be completely different. These things will be replaced one day, but people use these tools a lot of the time in their jobs and personal life which forces people on the outside to paint a narrative of you whether true or false. Stigmas have been created about who you follow, what you post, who you block, etc. It’s very much at the forefront of how a lot of younger people communicate now. 

     Facebook is so widely used by so many different age groups that now people are able to find others with specific common interests which may or may not be bad. Facebook has a problem controlling hate groups on their platform who congregate there, which gives rise and power in numbers to groups. The internet has always had this issue and isn’t brand new, but they were restricted to unknown sites and it wasn’t a mass of people. Now, with different smart devices able to be brought anywhere communication has never traveled so quickly between people. Misinformation is the biggest plague to it all since a lot of people have trouble telling fact from fiction when anyone is able to do anything online now. Social media is able to easily bring us all together, but it isn’t always for the best sometimes.