As I scroll through Instagram, I see User 1981918 commented on a girl my age’s post, “go do the world a favor and kill yourself.” I imagine how scared she must have felt after receiving this comment, however I realize she could have prevented this by having a private account.
Social media has slowly crept into the everyday lives of every high schooler, and it is important to notice the dangers of sharing your personal life online. While the endless entertainment may seem completely harmless, it is actually the complete opposite, which is why it is so important to keep your life out of the public eye.
There are evidently certain advantages to keeping an Instagram account public. It is easier to gain a large following, and you will receive a lot more engagement in your content. However, the risks certainly outweigh the benefits.
One major issue on social media is online harassment, which can include threats, embarrassment and humiliation. This could entail rude comments on one’s post or frightening direct messages. This type of harassment can be particularly damaging as it is typically anonymous and hard to trace. Unlike other forms of bullying, a cyberbully doesn’t confront the target in person, making it more likely for harsher words to be said.
While the immediate response to online harassment for most people would be to block the account, that is not entirely effective. Any user on Instagram can easily make a new account, and with a public Instagram account, they could follow you over and over again.
As a teenage girl, it constantly worries me when I read news stories about other girls around my age being harassed in public. This makes me scared to be alone in public, even when I am with my friends. With a public account, this fear extends to the online world.
According to the internet provider Viasat, 63% of people on Instagram have blocked someone, and over half of those people are women. No one should regularly need to constantly block suspicious strangers, and when I see girls with public Instagram accounts who receive inappropriate and scary comments, I realize how intense the issue of public accounts has become.
Another significant risk that comes with social media is identity theft, which is when someone’s personal information is stolen for financial gain, deception or other reasons. For apps like Instagram, this most typically occurs through scammers hacking into your account in order to have access to your personal information such as contacts, photos, videos and financial information.
According to Identity Guard, 46% of Instagram users are at risk of account takeover or fraud. Even if you have a public Instagram account and you think you are not over-sharing, a scammer is still likely to find personal things such as the city you live in, date of birth and your family members.
Say you absent-mindedly post a picture with your soccer jersey, a scammer could easily find out more information about you now that they have your name and your school name. With just this information, they can more easily hack your account by testing passwords that apply to these personal aspects of your life.
As high school students, it is scary to know that online scammers can find information about you simply from your most recent Instagram post. You never know what could happen once someone with bad intentions finds your information, and it’s better to avoid the risk rather than face the consequences.
As long as the internet exists, these problems will also exist. However, making your social media accounts private is an important step to avoid all of these concerns. With a private account, you can control who follows you, and therefore who sees your content. If someone wants to follow you, they request and you can either confirm or decline. This comes in handy to decline dangerous accounts, and to only accept the people you know.
Our identity should be kept safe, and on an app where everyone is constantly posting about their everyday lives, it is important to consider who has access to view it. People need to realize now that they must guard their personal information, otherwise it might be too late.
