Privacy: Is it an Illusion?

Is your privacy at risk? How important is personal privacy in today’s society?

When I was in 7th grade, in Chile, I took a really ugly selfie on a friend’s phone for no reason. A few days later, my friend posted it on my facebook wall, also for no reason. Differing from a lot of people my age, I don’t feel embarrassed easily, so it is not disconcerting to have things like an ugly selfie being on my Facebook wall. So instead of trying to delete it or being angry at my friend, I just laughed, and left it there.

A few months later, the student council of my school (which was run by 11th and 12th graders) made an unnecessary informal award ceremony for Grades 7 through 12. For each award, they would nominate one person from each grade, showing a picture of the nominee on a giant projector in the auditorium in front of the whole school, and then select one of the nominees to win the prize. Since it was my first year in the Senior section of my school (Grades 7-12), I thought not many people knew me, apart from my brother’s older friends. Yet there were a few girls in 11th grade that I didn’t get along with. Because of these two reasons, the thought of me winning one of the prizes never crossed my mind. Until one of the categories said “La Más Macha,” meaning “the manliest girl” or “the toughest girl”. My expectations went awry when I realized I was nominated. And they showed that ugly selfie that my friend had posted on my wall earlier that year. And everyone laughed. But not only was I nominated, I won the prize. So my beautiful picture was covering up the whole projector, and I had to get on the stage and receive my award in front of the whole school, while they all laughed at my picture.

That day at school, many people were commenting about my picture. Luckily for me, I don’t care about people doing things like that to me because I find it funny as well. But the whole thing made me think, “what if I did care? What if I was embarrassed of people seeing my ugly pictures?” Being only 12 I hadn’t really considered all that, and I realized that when you post anything on social networks, people can keep it, and use it against you whenever they want. That day, I decided that, even though I don’t care about these kind of events happening again, I might care in a few years from now, so I should start being careful about what I post on my social media. Since then, when I post things on my social media - especially pictures - I think “what would my grandma say if she saw this post?” and then, imagining her reaction, I decide whether to post things or not.

Regarding social media, I don’t feel my privacy being invaded. People only have access to what is on my wall, and my pictures, and those things are there because I put them there. If I did not want people to see them, I would not have posted them. For the same reason, I believe people should be more careful and aware of what they post on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram because even if you delete it, there might be people who already shared it or took screenshots, or other things to keep that post alive. Maybe right now teenagers don’t care, but in the future, when they are trying to get a job and their bosses decide to look them up in their social networks, or when they have kids, and they type in their parents’ name in google, then they will look back and regret having posted things that create a bad image for them.