I can check my friends’ twitter activity--whether I’m at home on my computer, or outside on my phone. I can video chat with friends whenever I want to know what they are doing. I update my Facebook account daily, and check it for news so often it’s as if I have a nervous tick. If ever my friends are over, or I am doing anything mildly interesting, my Facebook friends have been notified. Chances are, I even know what most of my friends or even acquaintances had for dinner last night, because they took a picture of it and put it on Instagram. In a world like this, celebrities aren’t the only ones who are constantly in the public eye; we welcome friends and strangers into every waking moment of our personal lives.
This recent rise in the use of social media and the use of smart phones has transformed the nation. There truly isn’t a scrap of privacy left in the life of a typical American, and we have social media to thank for that. “Privacy is dead, and social media holds the smoking gun,” says Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable. We have been given the ability to update everyone else on our lives, and be updated; but ever since smart phones have become popular, we are capable of doing this anytime, anywhere. Some are choosing to use this new technology to keep the lives of others at their fingertips, and still ensure that their own life remains omnipresent in the eyes of others.

Almost everything about us can be viewed on just one social media website, and the crazy part is, so many of us choose to put it out there. There are websites like Twitter, whose purpose is to update everyone about every detail of our lives, and to keep us updated about everyone else’s. Other websites allow us to share our likes, dislikes, friends, family, religious and political preferences, past locations, and events we are planning on attending. If there is ever an inquiry as to someone else's whereabouts, there is a good chance that Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram can divulge that person’s location, with the use of location check-ins and photo maps. Yes, that’s right: people actually take pictures and attach them to an address on a map which is available on a social site for the world to see. There is not one aspect of our lives that is not broadcast.

Whether it is a mobile application, an e-mail account, a video chatting website, or a social networking account, we have all become accessible to anyone and everyone. It used to be that the only way to contact others was to go to their house, write them, or possibly call them on their land line. Now, we are all at each other’s beck and call. Although it may be convenient to be able to send an instant message to someone, or video chat that person on FaceTime, where do we draw the line at what is invasion of privacy and what isn’t? On top of that, there are some websites which inform others of when their messages have been delivered and read by the recipient. It is almost as if social media is forcing us to engage in conversation at all times, and if we don’t, we will be called out for it by the site itself.

With all of this availability and lack of privacy, we have become vulnerable. Not only are there hackers who can easily gain access to these social networking accounts and access mass amounts of information, but who knows what the networking sites themselves are sharing? Is it really a coincidence that ads from the stores we like on Facebook are showing up on most of the webpages we visit? Although it is easy to believe that pressing the “Private” button on “Profile Settings” makes an account sealed off from the world, that is hardly the case.

In fact, the founders of these social networking sites actually make claims that it is possible to make a profile truly private, when often, it isn’t. It is true that account settings on many social networking sites are manageable, but if anyone is really trying to find a private social networking page, chances are, they will. Colleges are able to gain access to private Facebook accounts all the time. Twitter accounts, in the meantime, are visible to everyone. So, although it may feel as if there is some sort of control over our privacy on social media, this feeling of control is partly a fantasy.

Yes, social media has allowed society to connect in ways that it never has before, in the most convenient way yet, but does this convenience come at a price? By looking at all of the things it has allowed us to make public about our personal lives, and how available and exposed it has left us, one would say, “Yes.”