Yolandez Thomas

[yolandezthomas]

Protecting One’s Privacy

           The protection of someone’s online privacy is just as important as the protection of their offline privacy. It is very important to protect someone’s online privacy because many people out there that are stalkers, hackers and cons go online to find information about their potential victims. We live in a world where everyone is so social media savvy and involved that we don’t pay attention to certain risks that could affect our offline privacy. Many people have their profiles unlocked; therefore they have no control over who views their profile. As a result, some people have access to our most personal information and we don’t even know it. Most social media platforms have a tab that allows us to tag our location. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook allows us to tag our location in our posts and tweets. Even though this doesn’t violate our online privacy because we have the option to say yes or no, this could violate our offline privacy. If some develops an infatuation with a person and begin to stalk them, something as simple as tagging yourself at Starbucks makes their job that much easier to bring harm to you. That’s why it’s very important to protect a person’s offline and online privacy.

           Online shopping has become very popular and business has grown due to its popularity. It’s very easy and convenient because you can shop anywhere and off any of your devices. Even though sites say they protect your information, some consumers don’t feel as if their credit card information is protected. There’s really no way of knowing if our credit card information is protected. Therefore it’s very important to protect consumers online privacy to their credit card and personal information when they are shopping online because once someone has that information it is easy to ruin someone’s credit and they may not know until it is too late. Sometimes there’s no way of knowing someone is using your information unless you regularly check your credit report. When you are shopping online and doing job applications, computers have functions that ask you want to save your information and passwords. Once your information is saved anyone that uses that computer has access to your personal information. If you are using a public computer such as in the library and you accidently click yes to save information and password, it’s hard to delete that information. Anyone that logs onto the website has access to your information.

           I’ve been on Amazon browsing on a computer on campus and noticed that someone didn’t log out of their account. Most people save their credit card information on their account. If the wrong person got a hold to their credit card information then that could be hazardous.

           On an episode of Law and Order: SVU, a stalking victim tagged her location on foursquare and her stalker showed up to the baby store where she was shopping and confronted her. She had to get a restraining order out on him. It’s very important to protect one’s online and offline privacy because both play a huge role in living a comfortable life.

[yolandezthomas]

Slacktivism

Slacktivism is the feel-good effect that describes how a person feels after supporting an issue or social cause. The effect has little to no practical effect on the social cause that the person is supporting. So in other words a person jumps on a bandwagon to support a cause because everyone else is supporting the cause and it has been made popular for some particular reason. The person begins to support the cause but isn’t actually doing anything to help the cause. They are just saying hey I support this cause just to make their selves feel good. Once the support the cause they begin to feel they’ve accomplished something by supporting the cause when in actually they’ve done nothings to better the cause besides saying they support the cause. The feel good feeling they have after supporting the cause is basically considered slacktivism.

           In recent years, social media has made it so much easier for someone to participate in slacktivism without them actually knowing that they are playing a part in it. There’s always a new cause to support and everyone take to their social media site to tweet, post and Instagram about it saying I support whatever the cause is. But in actually the post and tweets are really helping the cause. Yes, it makes those who are “supporting” the cause feel good about themselves, but it’s not actually helping anyone. Everyone has such a short attention span these days that before you notice it, no one is tweeting and posting about the causes anymore. Some people actual support goes no further than their post on Facebook, tweets on Twitter and post on Instagram. This is how social media encourages slacktivism. A lot of the times certain causes come out of nowhere and everyone jump on the bandwagon but they don’t actually research how they can really make a difference. Not too long ago, there were a lot of celebs and people around the world using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. What was happening was terrible but all people were doing were posting pictures and using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. A lot of people felt good about their self for supporting such a worthy cause but in actuality they were doing absolutely nothing to bring back those girls and do help the situation. On the flip side social media does help spread awareness about a lot of cause but most of the time its stops right there. The ALS ice bucket challenge was on the rare occasions where something that became popular on social media and it actually made a difference because so many people donated money to ALS but others just did the ice bucket challenge because everyone else was doing it on social media. They really didn’t do their research and figure out what ALS really was. Social media can be a great tool to spread awareness but it also cripples a lot of cause because it allows people to fake support causes to make them self-feel good instead of actually doing something.

[yolandezthomas]

Does Social Media Make Us Lonely?

No, social media doesn't make us lonely or unhappy. One thing that I believe that social media does is hinder normal human interactions. Instead of going out to normal places where we would normally meet new people, people rely on social media sites to meet new people and make new relationships and friendships. Social media allows people to portray themselves in the best light possible. It allows people to be whoever they want to be even though they may not really be like that in person. This causes other people to look at others’ lives and think that their lives are perfect and that they are really happy. This causes jealousy and envy therefore alluding to the fact that Social Media makes people unhappy. Some people rely on social media to bring them happiness. Some people are so driven by likes and comments on their pictures on Instagram to validate them as a person. The article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely” basically said blamed Facebook for people being lonely. I think it’s kind of crazy to blame Facebook for the lack of more face to face interaction. In my opinion, Facebook has opened the world up more to meet new people that they probably wouldn’t have ever come in contact with outside of social media. There are so many people in the webisphere and the internet and social media websites allow us to interact with them. Some people we would never come in contact with in everyday life. Therefore, I don’t believe that Facebook is making us lonely. But I don’t believe that social media does play a role in our happiness. Social media affects one’s self esteem and in response affects one’s happiness.

[yolandezthomas]

Record Stores vs. iTunes

In recent years, Recording Artists and the music industry as a whole have taken a hit due to new forms of streaming and buying music. Record stores have taken a hit and even closed business because of iTunes, Google Play and other forms of buying music online. Many consumers buy their music online rather than going in the store and buying the physical copy. The internet has played a huge role in the decrease of the album sales. Many artists have become outraged because consumers aren't buying their music. Consumers are buying singles rather than full body of works. Due this shift in the climate of music sales, musicians and record labels have to shift their focus on marketing, advertising and pushing their artists' brands and music. Buying music is only a click away. Consumers can just buy music and download it on their phone. This has put so many stores out of business and shifted their focus of their stores. Another factor that has crippled the music industry and free streaming from sites such as Pandora, Spotify, SoundCloud and YouTube. Some consumers don't even purchase music anymore because they can simply just listen to it for free on YouTube, SoundCloud and Pandora. Consumers have unlimited access to free music and their fingertips. Therefore unless they are super fans of a musician they're not going to purchase their music. Even though the internet has been very helpful in the marketing, advertising and pushing of artists' music and brands, it has also hurt them. In the last couple of years, artists have been getting smarter about protecting their music. in December of 2013, Beyonce released a surprise album exclusively to iTunes. This disable piracy and free streaming of her album before and after it released. Other artists and record labels have followed in her footsteps and it has proved to be successful. iTunes has also utilized their iTunes radio and allow artists to stream their albums a week before its released to allow consumers to get a first look and to kill piracy and leaking of their albums. This also is a marketing tool to help increase album sales. So far this has proved to be successful. If artists and record labels continue to create creative ways to market and advertise their albums the climate of the music industry may continue to improve.