Your personal safety online is important this is why you should consider your social media safety. Everyone needs to be more careful online and I’ve come up with some tips that I don’t think are too hard to do but they could prevent a number of issues.
- Regularly check the privacy settings of your accounts. Facebook and Twitter have different levels of privacy available for your accounts. Instagram has the option for people to request permission to follow you. Somewhere in the terms and conditions that you accept when you sign up to any of these services, you will more than likely be agreeing to the fact that they withhold to right to make updates to their services and in doing so they may revert to default your privacy settings. (I’m not saying this is the case for all platforms but it’s worth checking with Facebook changing their algorithms frequently.
- Consider the audience of the things you share. Every time you post something you should really decide whether you want that content to be online forever. Do you want this to be part of your digital footprint? If your grandchildren’s children are given a summary of your life what do you imagine it would consist of? Mine mainly would have been mainly moaning about stupid inconveniences and bragging about something good happening. Just bear it in mind.
- Who are you actually friends with? In Digital Marketing there is a term for the amount of people that will see you post. This is called “reach”. Basically it means the number of people who can see it. Often this is referred to as impressions but Facebook are different. Reach is fascinating. For example, if you post something there is a potential that everyone you are friends with will see it. This is unlikely but it is possible. Theoretically then if each of these people shared it, it could be seen by all of their friends and so on. This is why you often see people putting posts on that are going “viral”. Topics like “I’m wanting to see how many likes and shares I can get to show my students about online safety” is something I see quite regularly. This is good. Someone needs to try and educate the younger generations about the potential implications of having a presence online. So basically, when you post something remember that once you post it, this content is no longer yours, it belongs to the internet. Anyone and everyone can share it, screen print it, archive it, you name it, it can be done.
- Whatever you post could be interpreted in different ways. Yes, the world has gone mad. Political correctness, everyone gets offended, blah blah blah... it is what is is. At the end of the day what you post online is often in the form of text. Text has no tone (unless you write all of your posts in the form of scripts with directions and everything). Just consider this when posting online. You also need to realise that your friends might not be offended by anything you post but if they share something and a friend of family member of their’s is offended, it could potentially escalate. I’ve heard of a scenario where someone posted some content on Facebook that was about the money cuts to the police force referring to something that Teresa May had said during the elections, this persons’ friend liked this content and one of their friends was offended. Unfortunately, this friend of a friend was a colleague, it escalated and this person ended up being investigated at work. You’ve got to think about how you are perceived online. It’s not just your friends that could see what you put.
- Potential employers use social media to screen applicants. When you set up your Facebook profile when you were a young impressionable teen, you probably showed off and put silly things in the description/about us section. Might be worth checking this. That content probably is still there. When you were 16 you may have listed “getting drunk with my friends” as a hobby or interest. Strangely, a future employer is not going to be keen on taking on someone who thinks that is a good past time. And if there is you “social drinker expert” and “mrs I love knitting” they are probably going to safeguard themselves by choosing the more sensible option. Can’t blame them really.
- Throughly consider who you connect to. It’s very easy to click that “accept request” button. I use the theory of “ if I bumped into this person in the street would I talk to them”. If the answer is yes then you probably are quite justified in having them as a friend or connection. If you are only friends with them so that you can stalk them, please think about your behaviour. If this was in real life, you could be arrested. Don’t think that because it’s online that this behaviour is acceptable. Of course it isn’t punishable but think about it from an objective point of view. If you’re spending your own time that could be used elsewhere spying on others lives you might want to take a minute to ask why, why are you doing that?
Please remember
Social media is always changing, they are always updating settings and changing things. Whenever a platform may change it's look, it's probably safe to say that they will more than likely have changed something in the "back-end".At the end of the day, it's your responsibility to check your settings, you waver the right to blame any of the platforms when you click accept to their terms an conditions so check, check and check again.
