How I use Communication Technologies

 With social media and communication technologies constantly advancing, I'm going to look into what I currently use, how long I've been using it, the privacy issues I and other individuals face and the dis/advantages that social media and communication technologies can present. 

I use several forms of communication technologies to communicate with my friends and families. I use Facebook and Instagram to communicate with friends and my smart phone to communicate with family as they're not located on social media.I have been using Facebook since 2010 when I converted from Bebo, a previous social media site. Instagram is a newer social media of which I've only been apart of a few years. Obviously with my smart phone I have had one for many years since grade 7 in high school and is a form of communication technology that constantly upgrades. 

The influence to change from Bebo to Facebook was definitely social expectations as all my friend were changing to it so to stay in touch with them Facebook was a must. I originally found Facebook through my older brother and my first thoughts were 'I'm never going to use that' but as time changed and Facebook became more popular my thoughts also changed.

Privacy is an issue in new technologies as there are more people these days that access your information for negative purposes thus increasing cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking etc. A lot of privacy issues relate back to reputation management and how men and mainly women go to extra effort to prevent any chance of a hit to their reputation. Men generally do not care as much about their privacy as women because they are not threatened as much by reputation on social media (Madden, 2012). At this point in time I have not had an issue with privacy on social media or with technologies but I am well aware of the implications they propose. I have no issue with Facebook or Google collecting data about their users as that should be an expectation when you sign up for one of these sites. 

I have met people online then met them in person, but at this point in time I don't know anyone purely online. It was different meeting them online because your expectations are so much higher because you don't actually know how they are in person.

I try to keep my privacy very high so that access isn't easy to people I do not know for safety of myself and my friends because the world is unpredictable these days. 

Madden, M. (2012, February 24). Privacy management on . Retrieved from Pew Internet on social media sites: http://www.isaca.org/Groups/Professional-English/privacy-data-protection/GroupDocuments/PIP_Privacy%20mgt%20on%20social%20media%20sites%20Feb%202012.pdf