Social Media is regarded as the worst and best thing to have ever been created for mankind. Social media allows a person to go on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram (to name a few), and connect with people that they might have graduated high-school with 20+ years ago and talk to them and share ideas instantly from across the continent and/or across the globe. Sites such as these are magnificent to share your recent vacation pictures from Greece or to show outrage over your favorite sports team losing, or to even simply get your daily news from whichever site that you choose.
Seems great, right? What many people never take into consideration is that people from all across the world can now access your vacation photo on Instagram from Greece that shows each of your family members on vacation and your underage cousin with a beer in his hand or that anyone can see your outrage and typed verbal attack on Twitter at a player from the team that defeated your favorite team.
Social media has many positives but at the exact same time, many drawbacks that you simply can’t take away, regardless of what you may think. In a way, social media is like a prison, a type of panopticon. For those of you who do not know what a panopticon is, I will explain. A panopticon is a type of prison that was proposed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham in which a single guard tower stood in the center of a prison in which guards in the tower can visually see every inmate in their cells, causing the inmates to have a feeling of paranoia in the sense that they cannot tell whether a guard is watching them or not.The idea was proposed and used to deter crime in prisons so that prisoners would not make an attempt to escape nor harm another inmate or guard for the fear of further punishment.
That being said, isn’t social media like a panopticon? I can post a picture on Instagram right at this very moment and within a few minutes I may see the likes coming in on my notifications, however, that is just Instagram telling me the few people who have liked it, not every person that has viewed the picture. Even weeks later, I still don't know who is looking at the photos that I’ve posted. For all I know, someone is looking at my pictures right now while I type this article.
Furthermore, when people say, “Be careful what you post, you never know who is watching,” they really mean it; they are 100% correct in their statement. You never know who is watching and when. Think before you post and always, always, make the right choices that you won’t regret later on.
