The Potential Dangers of Social Media for Individuals

By Sean,

This blog is about the dangers surrounding Social Media. It will inform you of the dangers posed by using Social Media and what you could do to either avoid these dangers or lessen the impact imposed on you and your personal life.

The first of these potential dangers are internet trolls. Internet trolls are people who deliberately post inflammatory or derogatory comments on social media sites, chat rooms or blogs with the intent to provoke readers and disrupt the topic of conversation. The main issue with internet trolls is that the person/s initiating the offensive comments are anonymous as they can choose any username and no one will know it’s them making the comments. The best way to deal with an internet troll is to just ignore them. They’re not worth your time or the emotional distress they may have caused. Try not to let it get to you and remember that their comments won’t change who you are.

The second potential danger of using Social Media is going viral, in that when you post something online, you have no idea who is going to see that post and what their reaction to that post will be. To avoid the dangers of going viral, you need to be careful what you say online and be mindful about how it could be perceived e.g. posting something you intend to be funny as that’s your sense of humour, but then it’s perceived in completely the opposite way and you suddenly get loads of angry comments and death threats. It can then go viral, in that people see it nationwide, which can then affect your personal life, e.g. your boss seeing the post and firing you as you are giving the company bad publicity.

A third potential danger is giving your location away. Images you post online have time and location stamps on them, meaning that when you post that image you are letting everyone who view’s that image see where you are or where you have been. To avoid this danger be careful who is able to see the image, make sure you know and trust the people that have access to the images.

A final potential danger of using Social Media is sexual predators. This is the worst danger because it can have serious consequences for the person being approached. If a sexual predator gains your personal information, they can pass it on to other sexual predators. They can hide from view because of the anonymity social media allows, they can use photographs of other people claiming it’s them to lure you into communicating with them. The best way to avoid sexual predators is to just be aware of who you are in contact with and never arrange to meet someone you've met online unless you are 100% on who you are meeting.