COMMENTARY | Last spring the fundamental conflict between social media and privacy finally got the best of me. Because of my role as a public high school teacher, I tried to be especially cautious about the information I revealed in my Facebook profile and posts. But I eventually discovered that, as a teacher, participating in social media put too much of my privacy at risk. I only wish I could protect my privacy as easily as a consumer.
I began using social media in a flurry of excitement about its possibilities for improving my interactions with friends, students and other teachers. But I soon realized that the information I carefully selected for posting was just the tip of the iceberg of my identity on Facebook. My friends and family tagged me in pictures and posts and posted to my wall information I would never had revealed, knowing the audience for my profile. Then I learned about the risks of my account being hacked, which might result in deeply embarrassing though false posts. The potential of these relatively minor lapses in privacy to derail my career were too much for me. I quit Facebook.
Quitting all Internet activity simply isn’t reasonable. But by continuing to surf the web from my mobile phone and MacBook, I am feeding the massive industrial machine that devours consumer information. Why should I care that Google or Facebook tracks my activity with a “cookie” and pools that information with similar data from millions of others to form saleable profiles? Why should I care if my search engine collects information on my habits and locations and changes its behavior according to the info it collects?
The answer is that, at every turn, privacy has been the price individuals pay for societal progress. It might seem as an initial matter that what little privacy I sacrifice when using the Internet is worth the connection to tremendous amounts of information and tools for sorting and gleaning value from that information. But just because I can’t foresee exactly how my formerly private information about my interests, viewing habits and location could potentially be manipulated or abused doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The combination of electronic technology and social media has deadened us – or at least me – to the small sacrifices in privacy that use of such products demands.
At least so far, I haven’t suffered any adverse consequences from increasing intrusions upon my privacy. But in my view it’s only a matter of time before the privacy we all so willingly sacrifice today will be lost forever – and possibly not for good.