When Myspace first became popular, I was in seventh grade and going through an awkward stage (though, at the time, I did not realize it). As a thirteen-year old, I felt very cool; I was fearless. However, my uninhibited, overly confident and extremely naive behaviors eventually came back to haunt me.
One day, my best friend and I decided it was time to enhance our Myspace profile pictures. We put on matching pleated Polo Tennis skirts, grabbed a camera, and went around the neighborhood on Razor scooters in search of good ‘photo opps’ (photo opportunities). We took turns taking the most ridiculous photos of each other―photos of each other climbing fences, sitting in fountains, laying on top of random people’s cars, standing in front of our town’s population sign etc….Being the young, immature, and foolish 13 year-olds that we were, we unthinkingly decided to post all of these incredibly ‘revealing’ photos all over Myspace. We didn’t stop to think about all the pedophiles and psychopaths out there who now had complete access to find out how old we were, what we looked like, where we lived, where we went to school, and where we frequently hung out with friends. A few months later, my father stumbled upon my Myspace account, and needless to say, he was livid. It wasn’t until then that I realized I had put myself in harms way, that besides all the fun and games, there were many potential negative consequences associated with Myspace (social media).
Nowadays, Myspace, is not as popular as it once was, but the consequences of social media have not gone away. In fact, they’ve only become more prevalent. In 2007, Myspace had reached its height at around 120 million users. Since then, it has been on the decline. But, in no way, shape or form did the decline of Myspace relieve us of the consequences and potential dangers associated with social media. The death of Myspace gave birth to a new monster: Facebook. In April 2008, Facebook had ‘caught up’ to Myspace, both social networking platforms had around 115 million users each.
Today, Facebook today has 1.1 billion users, almost 9 times the amount of users Myspace had at it’s height. Other social networking sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, have created new obstacles and potential consequences associated with social networking. My generation is one of the first generations to share everything online. It has become a 'cultural' or 'generational' trend to disclose anything and everything online, without much thought. However, as we've grown and matured, many of us have realized the harm in "over-sharing." But, unfortunately, the damage has already been done. Once we post something online it is there to stay, forever.
This is a spoof video about Myspace. The video is a bit dated, but the concept/message of the video applies to modern social media sites like Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Vine etc..
Safety for kids is a huge problem on social media sites. Parents need to think before posting family photos with their kids names, birth dates, school information, etc. My sister posted a picture of my nephew's birthday party in front of their house with address in the background with a comment that said Peter (last name) turned seven today! She also posted a picture of my nieces' graduation from junior high with the School name in the background and comments that gave away too much information about her and where they were spending the week on vacation. Maybe I'm a little paranoid but I would rather error on the side of too careful when it comes to children and family.
ReplyDeleteBTW - thanks for the video chuckles