Is Social Media Truly Safe?

When we put something on Social Media is it really gone, are we really safe on social media? Most people do not exercise caution or safety on Social Media thus, people fall victim to predators and information leaks. a question ever been raised when you search through other peoples profiles on Social Media apps? Most people will ask "Why is he posting his location, does he want people to find him or something?" Most people do not realize it when their parents tell them "What you put on the internet, stays on the internet".

But what is Social Media, Social media is defined as websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. Some of the most common are, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, with the list going on. Most people are not aware of what they post on Social Media and sometimes it can lead to bad outcomes. For example, someone posting their location of a store or where a person is at lets people know where you are. Predators now a days use social media to track their victims. Smart social, a newsletter site explains "According to a recent study from Kids Live Safe, more than 82% of online sex crimes originate from social networking sites that predators use to gain insight into their victim’s habits and likes." (Smart Social Para. 1). 

People also need to take into consideration that things they post on Social Media does not go away. Pressing the delete button may give the illusion that the text is gone, but in reality it is still there. Most programs have a type of storage unit that stores data from the persons account, this allows the company to see what you post as well as giving government agency's the ability to pull posts from accounts. Menshealth explains that twitter never deletes your tweets, "Twitter doesn’t comment on what it does when you delete a Tweet, but says that “search engines and other third parties may still retain copies of your public information, like your user profile information and public Tweets, even after you have deleted the information from the Twitter Services or deactivated your account.” (MensHealth Para. 6). As scary as it sounds it is all completely true, that is why many parents and agency's advise people to watch what they post on Social Media.

With this, Social Media is truly a cautious place where anything could happen. As most people do not exercise caution or safety on Social Media, they fall victim to predators and even information leaks. People need to be educated on this, doing this will make Social Media safer and give people better ways to keep themselves safe.