Writing online can be both dangerous and helpful to others. What one reads online should not always be trusted because the validity of information online is not very high. Anyone can post an article online and soon it will be read by hundreds of people and passed on through links and other posts, when it wasn’t even true in the first place. On the other hand, some of what is posted online is true but we can only tell by evaluating the source from which it came. We’ve been taught time and time again how to evaluate sources based on their “.whatever” ending and the messages that the author’s post and yet people still trust unreliable information they read.
What we post online stays there forever. We can’t completely erase anything that is present on a web page. Information posted on the internet can easily be copied and edited by other people. While this makes it easy to relay information, it can also have its cons. Someone could potentially take something you wrote and edit it to make it seem like you said something you didn’t. People can also keep information that is posted on the internet on their own computers forever, even if you delete the webpage.
Publishing on the internet can make it easy to spread word. A message can be transferred to millions of people in a matter of minutes once it is posted on the web. With the exponentially increasing use of the internet among people of all ages, this rate is getting even faster. These days, people check the internet hourly (or even more frequently) on their iPods, Blackberries, laptops, etc. Update ourselves on the world around us is now just a touch away.
When we post to our blogs, the only people who look at our posts are our classmates. It’s possible to other people to view them but it is less likely that they will come across them in their searches. It is a good way to share our opinions with the class but if we wanted to share with more people we would need to take a different approach. Most of the information that reaches millions of people is about top stories or important events, while what we write in blogs is just an expression of our opinions and is not written to be read by that many people.
People use the internet so casually these days and don’t realize the consequences of what they post. Even employers and universities across the country use social networking sites to evaluate their potential employees and students. Some kids start posting things on Facebook about themselves in middle and high school and this information remains online for the rest of their lives. The information that people put on some of these sites can ruin their careers. Almost all sites these days have privacy settings where people can make their information more or less visible to others but not everyone knows how to use them and even some people who do don’t take advantage of it.
It does seem uncommon that people outside of the class stumble upon our blogs here. Though it's possible, for sure, it's an interesting point to realize that it seems, logically, pretty unlikely for outside readers to come in. I say this mainly because I never see many comments left by people who aren't in the class, so I'm assuming. I guess you never know!
ReplyDeleteIt scares me every time that I update my Facebook or something because I don't know what I might put up that could potentially hurt me. It's also a reason I don't use Twitter cause I don't want people stalking what I do, haha. But great post, I agree with you on a lot of points like how people can take your words and change it to give it a different meaning.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you when you say that people use the internet way too casually these days, especially kids. There have been so many cases of online creepers and you never know who they are! Great Post!
ReplyDeleteI did not take into consideration the possibility of random strangers reading my blog until I read this post. I suppose I knew it was a possibility, subconsciously but I had not given it any thought. Your right, it just goes to show we must be careful in everything we post because you never know who is in the audience.
ReplyDeletei don't think people outside of our class stumble upon our blogs often either, and if they do, they probably don't think much of them since most are titled English 101, but i guess you never know. its definitely important to be cautious about what you put on the internet to see because you're right, it could stay open to the public for longer than we expect. My neighbor back home is a human resources manager for a big corporation (im not gonna name which one), but I know for a fact that they definitely do some internet research on potential employees before the interview process even begins.
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