Social media hat
What is social media?
If you are an avid user of social media, you will know how important it has become to you. You share your daily activities on your social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and others. You post your favorite photos, videos and text messages to your friends, family and to your online friends as well.
Social media gives you a platform where you can share your views and ideas through pictures and videos and messages like quotes or something else, for that matter. Social media is, indeed, a very big platform in today’s online world.
People spend most of their time on various social media networking sites these days. It keeps you pre-occupied on your devices. However, social media does have certain positive sides and negative sides as well.
Below we are going to see some of the ugly truths about social media and what are their effects on individuals who are enthusiastic about social media.
The ugly truths about social media are now exposed
You may be surprised to know that the social media networks have some of the ground-breaking and bitter truths which you might not be aware of.
Read below to know some of the ugly truths about social media which you never knew did exist.
1. Social media is very addictive
One of the major ugly truths about social media is that it is very addictive. You will often find people who are always engaged in social media network sites on their computers, smartphones, and tablets. You will also find people posting their daily activities and various other sorts of pictures and videos for others to see.
Currently, there are many billions of individuals who are active on various social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and so on. Since individuals are constantly engaged in their devices and updating posts on their social media sites, this also affects their physical society as a whole.
2. Social media takes a lot of resources
When you use social media network sites on your devices, they also consume a lot of your device’s resources. It consumes your device’s hardware like processor, memory, storage space, internet connection or cellular data and not to forget the battery on which your device runs for many hours in a day.
This is because each social media network site and their stand-alone apps include certain features and background processes that eat up most of your device’s power. Sometimes, you may notice that when you are accessing your social media on your hand-held device or computer system, the devices tend to start heating up and which, in turn, slows down your overall device’s performance. You can also experience problems like your device is froze and not functioning at all.
3. It can bring you health problems
It should be noted that an excessive use of the social media on your devices can create various health-related problems. Some of these may include a headache, stress, pain in your eyes, fatigue, insomnia and much more. You could also have problems that could affect your personality.
The social media is one such part of our technology that can pose a serious threat to your health and well-being. Thus, if you are always engaged on social media and doing activities like chatting with your friends, uploading pictures and videos, posting your comments everywhere, etc., you will start neglecting your health and food. Also, if you are engaged in social media during the night, you may have trouble sleeping. If you risk your health now, you might have severe problems related to your health in the long run.
4. Social media is the busiest platform on the internet
It is a fact that the social media platforms have become the busiest form of online activities on the internet as of today. The number of individuals is also increasing every day.
You will find all groups of people, young and old, keeping themselves always connected to their social media sites on their computers and smartphones. Although the internet has a lot of other useful things to offer to the users, it seems that social media has taken a major space for the people.
5. Your information may not be secure
For those who do not know yet, these social media networks store your information in their databases. The information that is stored with them is used for commercial purposes. Such as selling your e-mail address, contact details, etc., to third-parties for the purpose of promoting their advertisements.
This could be a security concern because you will not want others to know your personal details. That could also be used for exploitation and other illegal practices on the internet.
6. You are being watched
Social media has become so much popular among people that it has now taken the attention of governments on one side, and the interest of hackers on the other side. Either way, you might get screwed up, and really bad.
The government, FBI and the local police of your region use information that is derives from the social media networks in order to inspect, or to say, watch everyone like a watchdog. You might not be aware of this fact, but this is true. On the other hand, hackers are always on the lookout for their prey on the internet. In order to steal your information and use your information for illegal purposes. This may put you in some serious trouble.
7. It may be used for illegal activities
A lot of illegal practices are taking place on the vast and deep web. Social media is one such target where it is easy to harness the privacy and security of individuals. Your social media login details are often stores in your web browsers. That makes it possible for hackers and other illegal persons to hijack your personal information and use them for their illicit activities. Most of the time, the personal information which they steal from you are often sell out to other people who run scams and try to target you for money.
How can you tackle these dark sides of social media?
Well, if you are concerned about your safety and privacy while on the internet. You may have to be careful with what you share online. A lot of websites might trick you to like their pages and offer you to share with your friends through your social media profile. This can be advantageous for them. As they can easily get hold of your personal details and use them for all sorts of unlawful purposes.
There are, however, few simple things you can do that can protect you from falling victims to such people and their illegal operations.
- Do not share your social media passwords with anyone.
- Always log out from your social media profile once you do use them.
- Never lend your device or computer system to anybody you don’t know.
- Enable all the privacy-related settings in your social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.
- Only provide limited information on your social media profiles.
- Remember to delete browsing history from your web browser applications.
- Avoid clicking on links which you might find suspicious.
- Always check for the “https://”before each website on the address bar of your browser application. These are websites which are more secure.
Keeping these in mind, you can prevent yourself from exploiting on the internet. Make these your regular practice and you might stay safe.
