Essay Example on Technology and Privacy: Big Brother Is Watching?

Technology has influenced virtually every aspect of human life. Today, the internet and information communication devices such as mobile forms have been attached to social lifestyle. Imperatively, technology is spontaneously becoming a necessity hence the need to explore how this proliferation affects privacy. Arguably, technology is slowly undermining real anonymity. Technology can be construed as the "Big Brother" that permeates privacy and opens up an individual's life to scrutiny by the virtual community. For instance, Google maps, microchips, voice truncators, and other forms of technology make it difficult for people to hide personal life. In a technologically dynamic world today, various innovations that are undetectable can be used to collect private information about an individual without them knowing it, which then compromises privacy.

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The degree of real privacy is in danger as access to private information has been made more realistic and attainable than ever before. A click of a button with a remotely launched or installed device can gather very private information. For instance, when people need to pay bills or book vacations, there are android applications for all of it, which deducts the pay from their credit cards. For many of the Millennials and Gen Zer's ordering things from android apps is the typical lifestyle (Woodford, 2006). However, it makes older people uneasy, having that plenty of information available on the touch of a button. Older people feel uncomfortable with the techno-savvy generation that can retrieve even some of the critical data. A Google search or use of intrusion software can quickly reveal even the most protected personal data. With the internet, someone does not need to have a prior interaction with the other to know them since a simple search or some complicated technologies can be employed to get every detail from the comfort of one's bed or office.

Given how good teenagers these days document their lives online, there have been concerns about how lots of privacy they have online. It is becoming increasingly for teenagers to maintain their online lives private because the default on social media opts to make every post public. If a social media person wants to make their social media account private, they should go out of their means to make their account personal. Danah Boyd, author of the book it's Complex: The Social Lives of Networked Young Adults, writes that many teenagers seem like they are in a no-win situation in terms of sharing statistics on-line. If they publish their private thoughts to public spaces, and if they invent a personal area that parents cannot see (Boyd, 2014).

For someone to make their profile on social media non-public, it takes plenty of effort and time. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is continually creating new modifications and updates to the privateness coverage on Facebook (Spiro, 2017). It is difficult for users of Facebook to understand what they may be sharing publicly and what they're sharing to handiest friends. At one time, the whole lot turned into personal, and users could choose what they desired to make public. Now everything is public, and users ought to choose what they need to make private are left, making everything general stating that real privacy is a thing of the past Young adults feel the need to upload posts on social media because they have pressures from society. Nearly all teens in recent times are on-line. A few say that if anyone does not exist on-line, then the individual no longer exists in real life. People even post a funny story that if anyone does not have an Instagram account where they share what is happening in their lives, they are still in their analog lives (Parker, 2017). Social media, at one point, was a laugh platform to stocks certain exciting activities; however, now it has taken over the lives of many teens. Before social media even existed, human beings went on vacation to revel in themselves and get away the arena round. Now, one has to impeach the reality if teens even experience their holidays because many teens spend the whole time on their telephones and publish everything that takes place on their lives on social media. It has become uneasy about protecting the privacy of young people. The youth have become addicted to social media, and they post anything not minding their privacy. The trend demonstrates that the current generation does not view privacy as being critical, leaving it for the past generation.

Summary

Many people nowadays do not worry about their real privacy; technology is the leading platform that is contributing to losing a sense of personal security. Despite that technology is meant to make things easier, in exchange, it comes out outdoing the sense of privacy. Youths today are more inclined to the virtual community than the traditional physical interactions. On social media platforms, they post the happenings of their lives unperturbed that some of the information they post might be used for malicious purposes.

Tellers nowadays do not need cash at hand, people purchase goods, and they pay their money through swiping of their credit cards. In the current generation, such trends are common, contrary to the past, when only cash withdrawal from a credit bank card required user authorization to work. Serial numbers of the credit cards are currently used to transact money.

Technology has overtaken privacy, and the current generation believes that innovations in ICT have an intricate role in sustaining modernity, which then implies a less private life given the possibility of intrusions and malicious access to digital information. Services have been turned technologically if the current generation does not submit their details; they might end up not getting the services they want.

References

Boyd (2014). It's complicated: The social lives of networked teens. Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=vKL5nwEACAAJ&dq=its+complex:+The+Social+Lives+of+Networked+young+adults,+by+Dana+Boyd&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyhKW9zJbmAhXz6OAKHZqKDL8Q6AEIKTAA

Parker, R. B. (2017). A definition of privacy. (pp. 83-104).

Spiro, H. J. (2017). In Privacy and Personality (pp. 121-148)

Woodford, C. (2006). Digital technology. London: Evans. Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.ke/books?id=My7Zr0aP2L8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=technology&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2wJSpzZbmAhVNBWMBHY4gALgQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=technology&f=false