Essay On Privacy

Privacy: A Familiar Word or Estranged By the Big Brother?

Privacy is not a new word; however, with the advent of technology and social media channels, its meaning is evolving to become a word less familiar and perhaps more estranged and distant as predicted by George Orwell in 1984.

Privacy means different things to different people but in most cases, it is subject to people’s inherent character, unique upbringings and cultures. According to Wikipedia1, Privacy is, “The ability of an individual or group to seclude them or information about themselves and thereby express them selectively”. Despite the definition, most people choose to select and reveal more info about them. Privacy though, in my opinion, is one of our fundamental rights as is protected under the Fourth Amendment Bill of Rights and essential to all people’s physical and mental well-being to some extent.

In the Era of Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels, privacy doesn’t represent what it used to previously. It no longer seems to be significant to so many people’s notion of freedom. The global digital advancement has almost dissolved all the barriers existed to protecting one’s privacy. People’s several appearances on social media channels now represent their personal brand which they celebrate with so much pride. It is important to note that we no longer own the pictures or posts we post online. Ironically now, people compete with each other through their social appearance and everyone has become marketing pros. It seems as if people are actually enjoying not having any privacy by constantly checking- in their activities and locations, updating their status with what they think and desire to express their feelings and tagging in each other in their ...

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... watch us at all time to control their power.

With our silence and ignorance we are helping the government in destruction of our privacy. The more we expose ourselves the more we fall into their trap of consumerism, capitalism and even run the risk to our physical security. Many people argue that many companies such as Google and Facebook are taking measures to control people’s privacy online, but exactly how effective these control measures are in response to government pressures and how can we trust these giant companies to be the advocates of our rights? In this day and age that companies compete for consumers’ attention and the consumers lack of interest in their privacy, there is no more net neutrality and I am afraid the word, ”privacy” will be a dusty word found only in history books once those of us who have actually experienced privacy , are long gone.