Watching, Sharing, and Being Seen: The New Reality of Social Media Privacy

The value of being digitally ‘aware’ and how this applies to safe browsing online in a digitally changed world where social media has impacted the nature of privacy.

Let’s face it, there are moments in our lives that we all experience, but we don’t often discuss with others: we look at someone’s profile and within seconds we know where they have been last weekend, what they are reading and what they had for breakfast. You didn’t ask. They didn’t give you any word of advice. But information was there, you took it in. It is a social phenomenon that is many times repeated by billions of people each day: that quiet act of observation.

Social Media Changed the Meaning of Privacy

Up until now, privacy was a right you had as a matter of fact. It took work to give it up; a talk, a letter, a conscious decision to take a chance, to let someone in. The responsibility was on disclosure and not concealment.

It’s a relationship that has been turned upside down by social media. Today it’s a matter of concealing. Not sharing is a more active process than sharing. The general principle of platforms is that participation equates to visibility, and the easiest thing to do is to scroll, post and react, and personal information follows in a chain.

This is neither a technical note of remark. It’s a change in lifestyle. Things that were once private are now public, such as your daily routine, opinions, and those who you spend time with. But many of the users didn’t make that conscious choice. It was a gradual change that occurred over a period of time, with each small decision made being innocuous.

The Digital Footprint We Create Every Day

 

Consider one day on Instagram.Imagine one day on Instagram. The first story that the morning run posts lay out your neighborhood. You can see an image with a tag, indicating who you were eating lunch with. When someone likes a post, it shows you are of a certain political persuasion and/or have a certain type of humor. A comment beneath an account of news gives an idea of what you think about the news. None of these moments which are individual do not appear to be significant. Together they create an intimate portrait, a portrait that transcends the impulse that inspired them.

This is what digital footprints are all about. It isn’t a document that you write, it’s a record that builds up. Whereas a conversation may go out of your mind, digital content has persistence. Once a story has been created it only lasts for 24 hours, but screenshots do not. Profiles can be searched as archives.

This has increased awareness amongst people and behaviour is beginning to change. Increasing interest in knowing the extent of information that is public, who can get it, and when. In the wake of this discussion around watching and being watched have entered tools which allow users to view Instagram stories anonymously—whether that be with the intent of watching or being watched, these tools are not tools for surveillance.

Why Anonymous Browsing Has Become a Modern Concern

 

A sense of some reason lies behind the desire to look without being looked at. Humans have always been observed without getting their name out there, either through a window, through a room, or in public areas. But the idea that they should be looked after in return was not prevailing. But in the online space, viewing content all too frequently leaves a track. For example, when you view a story on Instagram, you can see how many views it has had, and you can see this information when you post a story. This places an added social barrier over a newspaper, that’s left on a bench.

The end result is a type of performative browsing, when people aren’t necessarily not interested, but rather feel wary about what they’re about to watch and read. To look at an ex-partner’s profile, research someone you’re interested in doing business with, or go back to someone’s work for professional interest: all healthy human activities turn into a messy situation when they are documented for looking!

There are privacy tools available online that lie in this balance. They don’t establish new intentions — it’s human nature to want to see what’s going on if you don’t announce yourself. What they’re trying to do is to bring back a digital version of a thing that was once commonplace: the ability to view public content without sending a notification, a number or a social obligation.

It’s not necessarily intrusive to watch public information. By definition, if it is a public profile, it is one you’ve decided to make public. The question is not ‘is it OK to look’, its ‘should it be OK to look’’.

Technology, Awareness, and Responsible Digital Behavior

When it is a problem, it’s not the technology. The mirror is practically always it.

Voyeurism and the need to self-present do not seem to be new phenomena brought on by social media. It intensified both and it put them on display in a way that necessitates facing issues that had been avoided until now. How can privacy be achieved in the context of sharing as the game’s main game mechanic? When user agreements are written in a manner that doesn’t read back to it, what does consent look like?

Understanding how information flows, what is available, what is not, how platforms “sell” attention, how digital literacy is important — these are skills that are as important as any other type of “literacy. In a time when the Internet was not yet widespread, I think it was not accepted to post your password. Modernly it’s about algorithms and audience segmentation, permanence of content, how you talk about what you’re sharing, and what you actually share.

There is no need to have paranoia when being aware. It takes the same kind of thoughtfulness as we take in other aspects of our lives where our actions have consequences which we may not see at the time of our action. These are just some of the aspects of “doing” digital with purpose — what to post, who can see it and sometimes how to not be seen — all of these can be part of navigating the digital world with purpose.

Conclusion

The limits of the digital world are still being established and for the most part we’re all doing that in real time – one post and one scroll at a time. It’s clear that the notion of privacy in the social media age is not black and white. This is a continuum — where we find ourselves on this continuum is more related to the awareness that we bring to the use of the tools than to the tools themselves.

Knowing what the digital footprint is doesn’t have to be a case of fear. It’s a gesture of clarity! In our world of visibility, being visible—or not—at the right time or in the right way is one of the human questions we must make.