As electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets have become more ubiquitous in our everyday lives, social media sites have become immensely popular as well. Websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have become parts of our daily routine, allowing us to connect with family members and friends behind a single screen and keyboard. However, as social media becomes more prominent in our daily lives, an important question arises: Are social media sites providing enough protection for our privacy?

It’s no question that bits and pieces of our personal information are available online; users often enter their email addresses, birthdays, school names, phone numbers, and other personal details into social media sites to personalize their profiles. However, the real risk comes with the possibility of a stranger’s unwanted eyes seeing the information. According to CNN, identity theft is currently affecting a new victim every two seconds. The more information available for the public eye, the more likely a thief is able to steal someone’s identity. With the increase of people using social media, it’s no surprise that the number of online-related crimes such as identity theft and fraud is increasing. But is there any way to avoid such circumstances?

Although many sites allow users to change privacy settings, such options are not automatic at the time of the account initialization, making most people oblivious to them. As a result, their profiles continue to use default privacy settings, which often make personal information transparent. If users wished to secure their information from the public, they would have to manually revise their profiles. Stephanie Zheng ‘18 comments, “Social media settings do protect us, since there are options to select how private you want your account to be. But they should make these settings automatic so everyone’s information is protected.”

Zheng voices the opinions of many students at Ridge; although social media sites do provide protection of our privacy, not everyone is aware about the options of changing personal settings. Lillian Usadi ‘17 elaborates, “Social media sites do make privacy more difficult than it has to be. Sites like Facebook make it harder to set things to private.” Instead of making users responsible for educating themselves, social media sites should have an obligation to have users better understand privacy options. They should even modify default settings so that profiles are automatically secure upon creation of the account.

Social media is an important part of our lives- whether for communicating with classmates about assignments or surfing the web. But one thing is for sure: privacy is an important aspect of everyone’s account. Although current social media sites allow us to change privacy settings, they must be revised so that strict settings are automatic. Instead of making the user responsible, social media developers must do everything they can to protect a user’s personal information.