Intro
Ethical Use, in the context of social media, is to not spread misinformation or cause harm/damage to people and property in real life using social media platforms. Currently, social media provides a way for people to communicate and spread information without having to be at the same place in the real world. People can also make money through social media by advertising their physical products or online services. Social media is being used more and more to spread misinformation and deal harm and damage. Discussing about it can make people more aware of and alert to the misinformation and lies, which can prevent harm or damage from being done to them or others.
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Privacy Concerns
Social media platforms, such as Facebook, can give out non-personal identifying information such as your age, gender, approximate location, and your interests to advertisers and other 3rd parties. They can collect data from what you are doing on Facebook, what information you post, the information of your device, and information from 3rd parties of what you do off-site. Data mining is considered to have major issues due to data accuracy, privacy and security, and ethical concerns. The data may include misspelled words, old information, and duplicate records. Surveillance is often used by governments and other authority forces to monitor their citizens. Almost all people on the internet are being monitored by this. On the internet, people’s personal information can become very public if not kept very secure and private by them and the platforms they give it to. Sometimes, this information can be collected and sold to other online companies. Many big online companies collect and store a persons’ personal data, which could be seen as a privacy issue. Sometimes the data that is supposed to be kept private is not actually completely private, and can be found by a Google search. Deleting posts or comments on social media is not ever a guaranteed way to completely get rid of it. In a test, only 1 out of 3 websites guaranteed not to give out information to third parties.
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Mental Health Impacts
Cyberbullying can be common online as the bully feels they cannot be caught, or will have less punishment online. Many times, the victims do not do much to report this kind of bullying to other people. People may compare their current situation to others in a negative way, making them either jealous of someone else or think less of someone else depending on the comparison between them and who they see online. This can negatively affect how they act in real life with other people. Some people may become addicted to social media, which can affect their social and physical health. This addiction can make them more distant to people in real life. Social media can positively influence someone's mental-well being by keeping them updated on things they are interested in, and connect them with family members and friends. Sometimes, people may be able to get help from other people through social media. However, other times, people can be informed or shown things they had not wanted to see, or other people online may not treat them as well. By providing a platform where people can do these things easier, the people running these platforms should be responsible to encourage the good things on their platform, and discourage the bad things.
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Spread of Information
On social media, information can spread quicker, as it reaches a wider audience whenever someone posts one thing. People may repost information, spreading to even more people. Many times, some people cannot tell between real and fake, so they may accidentally spread false information to other people until they are told it is fake. Misinformation and fake news can cause some people to do things that they think are right in the moment, but can later cause harm. Some social media platforms have fact checking under posts, which helps users know if a post has false information in it. Other users in the comments can also tell others when a lie or something is incorrect in the post.
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Social Relationships & Community
Social media can help friends and family members contact each other when they are not together in real life, play games, and do other things together which they could only do if they were together in real life. However, if one person in a group does not have access to the social media platform everyone else is on, they may be separated from the rest of the group. Online, people must act the same or even better than they would in real life. People sometimes feel they can get away with being a bad person online, and that what they do to people online does not matter as much. However, what people do online still matters just as much.
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