Introduction to Marketing: The Dangers of Oversharing on Social Media

This essay, written for an Introduction to Marketing course, delves into the significant dangers associated with oversharing personal information on social media platforms. It highlights the pervasive nature of social media in contemporary life, emphasizing its impact on individual lifestyles and bran...Read More

Running Head: INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING
DANGERS OF OVERSHARINNG ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Name

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INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING
Today the world revolves around social media. Easy fast and 24 seven around the clock
availability of internet has made it more obvious for each and every individual to haven
unlimited access to it (Wegerif, 2013). Social media presence has become an integral part of very
individuals’ life style as well as is considered to be trendy and happening. A person who isn’t on
social media is often made to feel excluded or backdated. Starting from big multinationals to
small private shop owners or shopkeepers are depending significantly on social media to
promote their brands because of its ever growing popularity and such a huge reach and appeal
(Fan and Gordon, 2014). However in this race of being online and trending on the top,
individuals are creating potential risks for themselves. Giving away too much information,
sharing each and every personal details with the world might make one famous but for all wrong
reasons and could bring in potential threats.
The main problem with social media is people seem to be more interested in learning
about its new features rather than understanding how and in what ways it can impact their lives
both positively as well as negatively. Facebook, the social media platform with its millions of
users have potentially created another planet which is virtual but strongly connected and very
much trending among all the users around the world (Kim and Johnson, 2016). However, this
social media platform has significantly changed its features rather updated itself time and again
for making it more attractive to its users. Today it enables its users to share their live location,
give check-ins of their location and constantly update what is the most recent happening in their
lives. Sharing photos and videos, going live on their social media accounts and what not. All
these features have made people more and more enthusiastic to share each and every significant
as well as insignificant events of their life on their social media accounts (Agger, 2015).

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However, what the users have forgotten to address in this tech crazy era is these enormous and
over sharing of personal data can bring in considerable threats to their life and property. The
recent Facebook Data Breach Scandal should have been an eye opener for every user around the
world to witness how personal data of the users are sold as business deals among varied business
houses and often lead to corrupt and unethical business gains among these dealers (Tuttle, 2018).
The third party applications present in forms of games and quizzes on social media often extract
varied personal data, store them and then sold to varied business houses in an unethical manner
(Krasnova, et al. 2013). The problem is not just with Facebook, every social media platform
whether it’s Instagram, Twitter, or messaging apps like Whatsapp or WeChat, all of these
possess equal threat of data breach due to their unofficial yet very strong system of data storage
and retrieval systems. The Facebook data breach scandal did bring in lot of criticism from the
whole mass where many thought of quitting the use of these social media platform but the rage
was very short lived. Though it made Mark Zuckerberg to appear in from of the whole
Government and seek forgiveness for such careless and manhandling of personal data of users
but in real it did not bring in much impact on the ways of using the social media by the general
mass.
The most important aspect in this whole discussion or argument is to make the mass
realize what actually means as “over sharing”, or exactly where one should draw the line. When
people unnecessarily rant about their job or personal life on social media platforms, or too much
sharing of their current location with photos and videos of what exactly they are doing where and
with whom, or an insecure settings of their social media profile where anybody around the world
can access their personal data like pictures and videos (Kumar, et al. 2013). Such privacy
settings make it easier for the business houses or marketers to locate and access personal

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information of the users. According to Centre of Data Innovation, the main problem is people are
not very aware of how dreadful and threatening can be social media as they are blinded by its
exclusive and interesting features (Chang, Kauffman and Kwon, 2014.). The study reveals that
social media sites raise potential revenue with their targeted advertising system which is
completely based on analyzing the user’s personal data and information. Thus such access makes
it more vulnerable for the users to get involved in varied troubles ranging from identity theft to
various other frauds (Levine, et al. 2017). It is also a very common scenario to see that when an
individual is searching for spectacles in varied online shopping site or is discussing about it with
a friend over a whatsapp chat, he or she automatically starts receiving notifications and ads of
varied spectacles on his social media platforms all over. This is the kind of tracking that follows
and therefore it cannot be over emphasize how important it is for the consumers to keep a check
on what kind of information is being shared by them to be safe in this virtually connected vicious
circle of information flow. Moreover there has been a raising trend among the social media users
to join varied social media groups where varied business transactions take place. Sellers of
varied garments, jewelries and various other items sell their products online. However there have
been varied fraud cases relating to payments through bank transfers as the accounts of the sellers
are often unverified leading to these fraudulent activities. The buyers are often mislead about the
quality as well as often cheated by the buyers and complain regarding such issues. However what
one needs to realize is the virtual media is a very huge and free space of communication where
there hardly exists any gate keeping (Westerman, Spence, and Van Der Heide, 2014), that is
what is actually been posted by whom and for what purpose twenty four seven around the clock.
Therefore the chances of being misinformed or cheated or misguided always stands high. What
actually needs to be done is keeping a check on one’s own activities. Digital literacy is a very

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important aspect of this whole problem which needs to be addressed in a global perspective
(Park, 2013). A good understanding of what could be the potential threats of using social media
in a careless manner needs to understood and acted upon in an immediate manner.
The virtual world is definitely interesting, unarguably captivating however potentially
dangerous if not used in the most appropriate and cautious manner. Some major and very
common forms of crime that arise due to lack of awareness and mishandling of social media
accounts by their owners are: defamation, cyber bullying, offensive comments of sexual
predators, and unnecessary spread of misinformation and hate speech (Ruths and Pfeffer, 2014.).
Social media users often lay much emphasis on their likes and shares, comments and number of
friends and followers. This age is often referred as the information age and one significant
problem of this era is information overflow. As people are now equipped with technology and
power to share and communicate around the clock twenty four hour in a day irrespective of any
geographical boundaries of space and time there has been pertinent increase in misinformation
and manhandling of personal information of the users. However what often remains unaddressed
is how these may impact their social security and lead to misinterpretation of information.
Thus in this report the problems of over sharing on social media has been addressed and
the necessity to become more aware about its potential dangerous has been identified and
analyzed in details.

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References:
Agger, B., 2015. Oversharing: Presentations of self in the internet age. Routledge.
Chang, R.M., Kauffman, R.J. and Kwon, Y., 2014. Understanding the paradigm shift to
computational social science in the presence of big data. Decision Support Systems, 63, pp.67-
80.
Fan, W. and Gordon, M.D., 2014. The power of social media analytics. Commun. Acm, 57(6),
pp.74-81.
Kim, A.J. and Johnson, K.K., 2016. Power of consumers using social media: Examining the
influences of brand-related user-generated content on Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior,
58, pp.98-108.
Krasnova, H., Eling, N., Schneider, O., Wenninger, H., Widjaja, T. and Buxmann, P., 2013,
June. Does This App Ask For Too Much Data? The Role Of Privacy Perceptions In User
Behavior Towards Facebook Applications And Permission Dialogs. In ECIS (p. 179).
Kumar, A., Gupta, S.K., Rai, A.K. and Sinha, S., 2013. Social networking sites and their security
issues. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 3(4), pp.1-5.
Levine, B., Marci, C. and Kothuri, R.K.V., Nielsen Co (US) LLC, 2017. System and method for
gathering and analyzing biometric user feedback for use in social media and advertising
applications. U.S. Patent 9,569,986.

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Park, Y.J., 2013. Digital literacy and privacy behavior online. Communication Research, 40(2),
pp.215-236.
Ruths, D. and Pfeffer, J., 2014. Social media for large studies of behavior. Science, 346(6213),
pp.1063-1064.
Tuttle, H., 2018. Facebook Scandal Raises Data Privacy Concerns. Risk Management, 65(5),
pp.6-9.
Wegerif, R., 2013. Dialogic: Education for the internet age. Routledge.
Westerman, D., Spence, P.R. and Van Der Heide, B., 2014. Social media as information source:
Recency of updates and credibility of information. Journal of computer-mediated
communication, 19(2), pp.171-183.