The Dangers Lurking Behind Social Media
Image: Pixabay.com BY ANNA BOWMAN Smartphones have become an essential to our daily lives: photographs, text messages, contacts - our lives are now stored digitally. Social media has risen in popularity alongside the smartphone, providing more ways for us to keep in contact with friends and share what's going on in our lives. For some, this is the primary reason for owning a phone: what's the harm in sharing details of your life online? It's harmless, you'd think; who would care about what day you were born aside from the friends that want to wish you a happy birthday? Why does it matter? Except it does. Data collection is rampant on social media, more now than ever. Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world and has had a long history of issues with user privacy, dating all the way back to 2006. In 2018, a massive breach occurred on the platform and Facebook finally promised to implement new "policy changes" twelve years after the init...