Societal Issues Raised by Social Media

With the increase in popularity of social media in the last few years, problems have arose and become more often because of this. Here are some of the issues raised by social media.

Online Harassment
Identity Theft

Online harassment is one of the most common problems within social media. People are facing bullying, threats and stalking on an everyday basis, the targeted person can be anyone teenagers, adults, celebrities etc. This is an example of a real life experience: "I have been friends with this person for 3 years now. Well best friends. I never thought she could do this to me. She's lying and getting our friends on her said. All i can do is watch. She's called me " Ugly RagDoll , Useless , Babied all my life , Jealous , I need to grow up , unpopular , I can go and riot under a rock! Who says these kinds of things? Only someone that is heartless and that has never been bullied before. They don't know how it feels i guess."" - 12 year-old girl from MI

The reason for this is because of social media, you can be anonymous so some people are acting differently than they would if they would talk to you face to face. If you are setting up a Facebook page or any other social media profiles you must be careful of what you are posting as instantly people have access to it (your friends etc.) and also all data and information will be saved by Facebook forever. For example Professors Keith Wilcox of Columbia University and Andrew T. Stephen of the University of Pittsburgh set out to answer this question in their study titled "Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control," which was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Consumer Research.
 "people present a positive self-view to others" when online, leading to a increase in self-esteem and decrease in self-control.

Intellectual Property theft

Another major problem that people face on social media is that many people are sharing their art, video and video games on Facebook. By doing this they are giving access to other people who can then upload their work, for example someone could steal your work, post it onto another network, copyright it and you will never be able to use your own work again. E.g.Type of protection Registered designs examples of intellectual property will be appearance of a product including shape,packaging ,patterns, colours, decorations. 

Another issue that people face on social media is that if your settings are not private on Facebook your privacy is public. Anyone can access all of your information that you have provided and also your pictures, videos etc. This means that the wrong people can steal and claim that they are you by creating a new Facebook profile using your information and pictures. This is the scary truth but it’s more common than people think this has happened to my friend and it took her two months to persuade the other person to stop using her pictures as their own, it caused her a lot of distress as the other person was using her to chat to boys.