Blog Post #4 - Pros and Cons of Sharing

Following the theme of last week's readings exploring the art of sharing online, I wanted to look at some advantages and disadvantages of sharing everything publicly on your social media. On one hand, you are able to connect with friends, family, and even strangers which you would not have daily contact with otherwise. It is a great way to keep in touch and let your community know what you've been up to. Sharing digitally is also a great way to grow your business, brand, or idea. Social media influencers have a legitimate occupation due to the fact that these individuals were able to expand their following with enjoyable content. 

On the other hand, some negatives of this modern norm of sharing everything is that it is online forever; something I posted in elementary school has to potential to affect employment or relationships in the future. In addition, having everything online makes you vulnerable to scammers or other criminal behaviour. If you’re posting all week about being on a glamorous vacation in Florida, robbers now know that your house is vacant. 


Comment below if you can think of any other advantages or disadvantages of constantly sharing. 

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 21, 2018 at 5:31 PM

    There are many positive and negative aspects of social media and the ones that you stated are the most obvious and major aspects. Adding to your list of both positive and negative aspects, I believe that more positives include how social media does not discriminate and allows anyone who has access to the internet to participate. Social media has become a global platform that has given marginalized people and groups a voice to communicate to the mass public. A negative aspect of social media is that it has increased peoples depression and anxiety and negatively affects peoples (mainly girls) self-esteem because it has brought about a new culture of users competing between one another for more likes and comments. It has increased jealousy and desire of others, which is not healthy for ones mindset and self-esteem.

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  2. Mira BawaOctober 22, 2018 at 7:10 AM

    I agree with your post! Something else that stands out to me as a negative to sharing on social media is over sharing on social media. I find that people feel the need to post everything on social media and it unfortunately takes away from the moment. While I am guilty of it myself, I have witnessed friends and family not being present because they're too busy posting selfies or checking how many likes and comments they have.

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  3. Nicole SzlendakDecember 1, 2018 at 12:51 PM

    Talia, I as well see social media all of it brings as a positive, yet negative affordance. I say this because I love how interconnected media is and the ability each medium offers when it comes to sharing my own information. I see this as a positive because I love being in the loop, and the socio-technical affordances technology offers allows me to do that at all times! However, I totally agree with you on sharing photos from the past, and how they will always be there. I wish I knew when growing up that technology afforded these affordances because I wouldn't have shared some of the content I did.

    The other advantages and disadvantages that I can think of is the convenience of sharing has made life much easier, and people more involved; a disadvantage I see is that nothing is truly private anymore, even if only shared to one person, the content has the ability to each hundreds.

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