Speech on 7 June 2021
Since the late 1990s, along with the rise of the internet, social media has become a big hit, especially among teenagers, eager to share their personal lives with their closest friends on a public platform. Over the years, people have grown accustomed to it, and sharing private data has seemed to be not much of a concern. However, there are obviously downsides to this. Have you ever heard of cyberbullying? Or have you ever heard of people who steal data from others online? These are problems of oversharing on social platforms, and I would like to discuss some of them with you today.
First, oversharing becomes much more obvious when you have a public account on a social platform. Public accounts allow strangers to follow you, and oversharing on these accounts can make those strangers know a whole lot about you. Data including your age, health information, appearance, gender, daily routine, hobbies, address, phone number, or even location would be vulnerable to third parties, and most of the time, the collection of personal information has been ongoing without your knowledge or permission. This sparked a huge privacy concern. Do you want your privacy to be threatened under a worldwide web? Do you want a third party to know everything about you as Apple CEO Tim Cook would put it, 'privacy is a fundamental human right.' maybe you're okay sharing your information with others, but I strongly believe that this is not the case for most of you because oversharing will become more disastrous with the next corresponding problem, cyberbullying.
Sharing your data with the public allows strangers to collect sensitive data about you, and cyberbullying has been a major concern over the years. Whatever you share online, especially your gender, appearance, hobbies and health information, are crucial information that originally should only be accessed by you. Oversharing information may allow strangers to cyberbully you online, laugh at you, make you feel ashamed, et cetera. Data can also be stolen and used to make fun of you or bully you online. Your anxiety may further encourage these strangers to react, and if this trend continues and becomes serious, some people being bullied would even commit suicide. This is an undeniable dark side of the worldwide web, as it may bring a lot of problems, which in turn most likely stem from one simple act – oversharing of your data, allowing strangers to access data without your consent. Never underestimate the power of oversharing, and what it may lead you to – an endless void of privacy concerns, or even cyberbullying.
It seems like oversharing, or social media as a whole, is too dangerous to be kept using, isn't it? But in my opinion, the problems are mostly related to oversharing, not the social media platform. Social media can be a safe place, but only when we treat it with extra care. Here are ways to combat those problems. First, every time you want to share something online, ask yourself if it is worth posting online to the public or just simply share it with your friends and messaging platforms. Also, it is recommended not to share your personal information in the bio section of your profile, to make it harder for strangers to learn more about you. When you share photos and videos online, check whether they contain any information about your location, or appearance, such as the café you visit every day in the background. Only share media with little information about yourself, this way it also prevents strangers from tracking you easily.
Another way to possibly prevent strangers from benefitting from your oversharing is to create a private account separate from your public one. Private accounts let you decide who can follow you online, giving you greater freedom to share some personal information only with your closest friends, instead of the public. I always separate my personal information from my public accounts and only share them in my private ones, to which only my close friends, or people I know, can have access. These little things can greatly reduce the chance of letting strangers benefit from your oversharing. The less they know about you, the more your personal information stays safe and private.
Remember, never let others other than your friends know a whole lot about you, and oversharing is a problem that should be tackled fast, especially among teenagers. The more disciplined people are on the World Wide Web, including not oversharing, the safer the Web is for a wider range of people. Let's make the web, or social media, safe again, for everyone.