Nothing can escape the prying eyes of social media

Posted on January 28, 2014 by 40 Mile Commentator

It is slightly ridiculous how much precedence people put on celebrities, from what they wear to how they act, and everything in between.

The annual Grammy music awards were held last night and before they were even over already stories were circling about this dress, that hat, this performance.

Videos of audience reactions were posted online, and even if you didn’t watch the show, you most likely felt like you had, simply from the online news traffic.

Maybe that is the problem with social media now a day. Nothing is private anymore. If you ate chicken for supper, and just happened to post about it online, most likely the other side of the world knows before your next-door neighbour.

Celebrities don’t have the option of not being forced to infamy by social media outlets, as they are constantly rushed by photographers looking for that million-dollar photograph.

They make mistakes like the average human, documented and replayed over and over by the public masses. Simply one action can reach billions in a matter of minutes.

But people don’t think about this when it comes to their own private lives. All they see are the celebrities posted all over, not realizing just what could be happening with their own photographed screw-ups.

A girl of 15 years old sends nude photographs to her boyfriend, and five years later the photographs pop up to haunt her. A group of teenagers post a photo of animal abuse and end up in jail with animal abuse charges a few days later.

Nothing escapes the eye of social media, and even sites like SnapChat cannot hide what you think they so cleverly hide.

Creating the perfect photo-sharing app was a fantastic idea. SnapChat allowed users to send a photo, dictating how long the photo could be viewed up, up to eight seconds.

The app would then alert the user if a screenshot had been taken of the sent photo, letting the user know exactly what was being done with their photos.

For a lot of rebellious teens this app was the perfect excuse, but what they didn’t realize is that SnapChat legally owns each and every photo and video sent across its servers.

Although users think these photos are private, they are anything and everything but.

Even something so simple as a teacher trying to inform her class of how fast a photograph can travel will have hundreds of hits in just a couple hours, simply by having the right people on her Facebook timeline.

So many youth, and adults, use social media, and although many are careful with their words, or privacy settings, many are not. It is always a shame to see vulgar language coming from an adult, or something sexual coming from a teen.

Social media has become so numb and those that use it have become so dependent, thinking that they will escape the wrath because it is all focused on the celebs.

The truth is that no one is invisible. Unless you remove yourself from the Internet entirely, good luck having a private life.