Social media addiction : The paradox of visibility & vulnerability

Abstract: We currently post a large amount of personal information about ourselves on social media sites. Many times though, users of these services are poorly aware of what kind of terms and conditions they agree to. There are in fact many techniques available that ensure users privacy, yet not many organizations make the effort to have those in place. Making a profit is what matters for companies and information on users is highly valued. It is the lack of regulations regarding data collection that enable organizations not to consider their users privacy. The data that can be collected is vast, it is important to understand that everything we do online, every search, click, shop and view is stored and the information is many times sold along to third-parties. Using information on users, companies can make profit by for example making predictions on the users, figuring out what they are interested in buying. It is nevertheless very difficult to make long-lasting regulations as the web constantly changes and grows. A qualitative research was conducted to observe to what extent social media addiction and its consequences is being discussed and researched. Interviews with social media users were also conducted. After an analysis on the findings it is clear that many users in fact would like to have more privacy online yet they feel the need to accept the term and conditions any way. Many users also state that they happily would like to read the terms and conditions, had they been written in a different way.