March 29, 2019
By Jessica Zheng
Staff Writer
According to a 2019 study produced by Hootsuite, a social media management platform, 54 percent of teens under 17 use Snapchat daily and 72 percent use Instagram daily. Of American Instagram users, 95 percent also have a YouTube account.
Even though social media is very popular, it needs to be used carefully, as there is always the risk of a hack or invasion of privacy.
Senior Rachel Alemany, like most of today’s teens, loves social media. Whether she is reading memes or scrolling on Instagram, she said social media is an important part of her daily life.
“Shamefully, I am a heavy social media user. I use nearly every popular social media site in the App Store,” Alemany said.
She said even though social media exposes many aspects of users’ personal lives, there are ways to stay safe and protect privacy.
She said these actions include limiting the personal information you post or write about, making sure you know everyone you follow and allowing a trusted adult to have access to your account.
Even though Alemany takes precautions, she said she feels her online privacy has been invaded because she has received an excessive number of direct messages from unfamiliar accounts which have included odd requests or demanded personal information.
Alemany said of the social media platforms she uses, Twitter is the least private.
“Although Twitter has a privacy setting, I’ve found that when a user is private, they can’t participate in all of the features that the application offers. For example, when someone is private, their tweets cannot be quoted or retweeted,” Alemany said.
She said these limitations encourage the majority of Twitter users to make their accounts public.
Junior Sara Fonkats said she finds Snapchat to be the least private.
“It mostly revolves around pictures as well as being able to see people’s locations,” Fonkats said. “I think there are ways you can keep it more private, but [it] is made for interacting with others and the media.”
Fonkats said she believes the location icon on Snapchat is an invasion of privacy, but she said this can be easily avoided by going on ghost mode.
“I try to keep my private information out of social media as much as possible. All the accounts I have are set to private, and when a stranger request[s] to follow, I simply deny it,” Fonkats said.
History teacher Mr. Newman said he uses Facebook and Instagram to stay connected with former classmates from Bergen Catholic High School and LHS alumni.
Newman said although he has never been hacked, he is aware it is one of the risks people face when they use social media.
“I have known plenty of people, even coworkers at school, whose social media accounts have been hacked to the point where they needed to make a new account,” Newman said.
He said social media is a fun way to communicate with friends and stay connected with the world, but it puts one’s safety in jeopardy.
“Students should make their accounts as private as possible and be very careful [and] responsible with what they say, post and respond to,” Newman said. “Most of the time, if you have to question any aspect of what you’re doing on social media, you probably shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing on there.”
He said students should be aware that the content they post on social media is generally available for public viewing.
“Once you click [and are] posting something, it’s out there forever,” said Newman.
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