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Online media use

What is online media?

Online media (also known as “social media”) is internet-based and gives users quick
electronic communication of content, such as personal information, documents, videos, and
photos. It refers to websites and apps that allow people to interact with others or create
and share content. The power of online media is the ability to connect and share
information with anyone on Earth, or with many people simultaneously.
The uploading and sharing content include:

 creating online profiles

 posting comments or chatting
 uploading photos and videos
 reacting to or ‘liking’ other people’s posts
 sharing links
 tagging photos and content
 creating and sharing game modifications
 remixing or changing existing content and sharing it

Task 1: What kind of online media do you know and use? How often do you use them?
Which one is your favorite and why?
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We use online media to have fun, make and maintain friendships, share interests, explore
identities and develop relationships with family. It’s an extension of our offline and face-to-
face interactions. For older teenagers especially, it’s often a key part of how they connect
with friends. But it is important to know that just like anything else, online media have both
positive and negative parts. They have advantages and disadvantages and once you know
them, you can be more careful using them and will have much more fun exploring them.
 Task 2: The advantages and disadvantages of using online media are mixed up here. Can you
put them on the correct side of the chart? Which of the following statements are the
advantages of using online media and which are the disadvantages?

Online media can Online media help

You can learn Online media can be
help in education. in connecting to
from others. used for hacking.
new people.

Online Online media can

Online media is a source of the
media can Online media can decrease face-to-face
latest information and update.
inspire you. make you addicted. communication skills.

Your privacy is in danger

while using online media.
Online media spread
fake news very fast.
You can share your
thoughts about a topic.
You can get bullied on
online media.
Advantages
Online media spread
information fast.
Online media is a way Online media help staying in
of entertainment. touch with family and
friends who live far away.
Online media can cause
mental health issues. Online media can
cause security issues.
Your time can be wasted
on online media.
Disadvantages
Online media safety tips
Although social media interactions appear harmless on the surface, there are chances of
unintentional exposure to stalkers, hackers, and identity thieves even as you share your
private life with friends and family. Obviously, it makes sense to take the right security
measures for curbing your online risks. As you think about social media safety, remember
that it goes much beyond only avoiding the wrong people online. You also need to be
cautious about crossing personal boundaries with your friends, teachers, coaches, and
professional associations.

It becomes critical to understand what to share, how much to share, and with whom to
share it while you network personally and professionally. Here are some basic rules that
have you fully covered when it comes to social media security.

Rule 1: Verify your connections

Even before you think about practicing caution with the information you share, there is a
need to be watchful about the people you connect with. Apart from the family, friends and
acquaintances, you may also want to connect with people you don’t know for the sake of
extending your network. But not every other connection may be genuine; people do put up
false accounts these days. If you are not convinced about the authenticity of an account,
unknown or one that claims to belong to an acquaintance, it is important to verify them. 

Users often set up such accounts to misrepresent themselves as someone else or make false
statements on their pretext. The intention is to embarrass the real person or even create
legal or personal problems for them. Further, fake accounts may be set up to send
connections to malicious sites or commit online frauds. A periodic look at your connections
is important so that you can detect the fake ones and get rid of them. This becomes more
important if you have a long list of followers, which tends to hide such dangerous accounts.

Rule 2: Privatize your social life

While being careful about your connections is important, you cannot overlook the value of
privatizing your social life. Thankfully, social media apps have effective privacy settings that
let you change your personal profile to private. By doing so, you can make sure that only
your friends or followers will be able to see your posts or interact with them. Simply
speaking, you can be the gatekeeper for your accounts on the network and prevent any
unauthorized access.

The privacy permissions differ for different platforms but they have you reasonably covered
when it comes to security. Some come with specific options that even let you share the posts
selectively with your friends and followers as well. Before you start using a platform, go
through these privacy settings and set them up. Also, understand how you can work on the
privacy of individual posts in case you don’t want everyone in your connections to see them.
Rule 3: Be judicious about what you share and consider any posting permanent

Whether it is a personal or professional social media network you are using, practicing
caution while sharing information is the key. These websites give you the option to share
your details with the connections but you need to be judicious about what to reveal. For
example, sharing your date of birth, home address or phone number is not a great idea as it
can pose a physical or online security risk.

Further, you need to be extremely cautious about your financial information such as credit
card numbers, banking information or passwords. If these pieces of information fall in wrong
hands, you may end up losing money or even compromising your bank accounts. Even small
personal and financial details can make you a victim to crimes such as identity theft and
stalking.

Also note that anything you share, while ‘deletable’ may show up elsewhere. On the
internet, few things are ever truly gone no matter how careful you are. If you don’t want
your family seeing it, don’t share it on social media even using an anonymous account.

Rule 4: Be especially careful with posts and pictures

Needless to say, you have to be careful about your personal and financial details when it
comes to social networking. But you have to be equally careful about posts and pictures as
well, particularly if you have a big following that includes people you do not know
personally. There are plenty of impersonators and people with bad intentions out there,
making it vital to understand the value of privacy.

If you are a selfie-lover, stick to pictures that are decent enough to share publicly. But be
sure to think twice before posting anything on the social media because you wouldn’t want
attention for the wrong reasons.

Rule 5: Avoid over-friending on social networks

Though you may want to have an impressive number of friends or followers on social media,
it may not be a good thing in the long run. You may end up with a large number of fake
accounts in the friend list and even have some people who befriend others with wrong
intentions like hacking or stalking. There are others who cause problems by introducing
spam into your timeline.

As a rule, prioritize connecting with people you know or at least, the ones who are friends
with your friends. Don’t just add people in your friend list to be in competition with others
who have hundreds or thousands following them. Limiting your friends will enable you to
share information more confidently and without apprehensions about being wronged. So
you should stick to the rule of less is more for staying safe on social media!
Rule 6: Avoid posting your location 

Another mistake that users often make is posting their location virtually as it can endanger
your safety in real life. It may feel good to brag that you are on an overseas vacation or
checking out the hottest new pub in town, but you end up telling unknown people that no
one’s home. Similarly, scammers and predators are on a look out for easy targets at tourist
check-in spots and popular venues.

Moreover, the disadvantages of posting your location and live pictures go beyond the
explicit risks. There are chances that your friends may put two and two together and see
through excuses for not hanging out with them. Maybe, your boss and colleagues would
come to know you weren’t sick on Friday when you post pictures at the resort on the
weekend. 

Rule 7: Block unfriendly connections

While social media is a great platform to interact with people you know and build personal
and professional connections, you cannot be really sure about their credibility. There are
chances that you may come across unfriendly connections more than once. Fortunately, you
have the option to protect yourself from harassment, stalking or unwanted contacts on
social media. 

When you join a social network one, be sure to check the blocking option in case you need
to block a member you do not want to interact with. Once you block a connection, you can
rest assured that they will not be able to access your account or get in touch with you again.
This is surely a good way to stay safe.

RULE 8: BE CAREFUL WITH TRENDS

Using online media, you will run into a lot of trends on Instagram or tiktok. They are also
often called “challenges” where you will have to sing something, dance a specific
choreography, post a picture of you in a certain situation and many more. These trends can
be fun, but they are not always harmless as they can be very dangerous.

An example: On Instagram, there is a new trend going on where you will have to post a
picture of a certain thing in your story. For example: “show me a picture of your pet”. This
can be fun to follow, but there are also a lot of unsafe ways to follow the trend. For example:
“Show me a picture of the house you live in.”. Imagine posting a picture of your house and
the way it looks from the outside on your Instagram story where anybody can see it. You
might think that you are just following a harmless challenge but this could be used by
stalkers as a chance to find out where you live.

This doesn’t mean that following trends and joining challenges are bad in general und should
be avoid, but you should be very careful about them and not follow every trend you see
online. Just remember that: if the trend is about sharing private information that not many
people know about or if it is about doing something dangerous like jumping off a high place
or doing any other thing that puts you in danger, you should not join the challenge.

Task 3: Watch the video “Being safe online” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=MB5VDIebMd8). Summarize in your own words what you have learned from that video.

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Online media is not the real life!

It’s one thing when it’s your friend’s profile. You see their Instagram highlight reel, but you
also know about the other sides of their life; the parts that never make it to Instagram. But
when it’s someone you’ve never met — a so-called ‘influencer’ — it’s a different story. It’s
easy to get too caught up in what they choose to put online, and believe it truly represents
their perfect life. And that makes us start to question why our own life is not like that. They
have the perfect body, the perfect boyfriend, perfect bowls of breakfast smoothie, the
perfect group of friends, perfectly smooth skin, and 100,000 followers. Why don’t I?

Online media is not real life! You can never know what’s going on behind closed doors, and
certainly not behind the screen of a phone. It can make us really unhappy seeing all those
perfect lives thinking that ours is not good enough.
Stop comparing yourself to people on online media:
There is no need to compare yourself with people on social media as you don’t know how
their lives really are. Using online media you need to be aware of the fact that everyone just
share the small part of their lives that they want to be seen by others. They won’t share the
times they felt unhappy, were fighting with their friends or were anxious about something.
They will post only a picture they look perfect in, even edit them most of the time. That
might make you think that they are more beautiful or seem to live a less with no worries, but
in fact, they are living a normal live, just like you. So whenever you are feeling that you are
comparing yourself with all the so called “perfect lives” on social media, here is a plan what
to do:

 Regularly take time off social media

 Remember that everybody has easy and hard times in their lives and that no life
is perfect, even if it seems so.

 Unfollow accounts which aren’t motivating you or making you happy

 Regularly check how long you are spending on online media using the ‘Your
Activity’ dashboard on your phone, and consciously try to reduce this.

Task 4: watch the two videos “A Social Life” and “Are you living an Insta lie? Social Media
vs. Reality” and write down the key massage of the two videos in your own words.
“A Social Life”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdVPLj_pIk&t=443s
“Are you living an Insta lie? Social Media vs. Reality”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=0EFHbruKEmw
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“Likes” don’t define your worth

Social media likes are a way to give feedback to the people who post a picture or share
something. And it seems that these days, the number of the likes you get are getting more
and more important, especially to young people. That can cause mental illness and
depression because when reviewing others’ social activity, people tend to make comparisons
such as, “Did I get as many likes as someone else?,” or “Why didn’t this person like my post,
but this other person did?” They’re searching for validation on the internet that serves as a
replacement for meaningful connection they might otherwise make in real life. The risk of
loosing touch to the reality is high. A lot of people think that the number of likes or
comments they get on their postings defines their worth, but that is not true. Liking
something is just a double tab, so it should not mean that much to you. In fact, what your
followers like or don’t like is just a picture of you or a situation you photographed, they are
not rating your personality or your worth. Your worth is not defined by that!

Task 5: Write down 10 things that you actually LIKE about yourself and your personality. For
example: I like that I’m an empathic person, I like that I’m creative, …

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Cyber bullying

Bullying isn’t new, but the way people go about it has changed. What was once reserved for
the schoolyard now occurs at home or at work via social media. Rude comments or bullying
in general can make one feel hurt, sad, or angry, leading to feelings of depression, anxiety, or
self-esteem issues. When the rude comments or bullying are online — when people are
looking at social media at home or at work — it can be even worse because it is happening in
a place where they should feel safe.

The written word is sometimes worse than the spoken word due to its permanency, and it
can feel impossible to escape bullying. People see the comments every time they return to a
page. Unlike in-person bullying, the bullies who makes the rude comments online cannot see
how their victims react. They may go further with their bullying then if they were actually
able to see the victim’s physical reaction.

Online groups are filled with hundreds if not thousands of people who all witness the rude
comments. This can make the situation more hurtful than a few people hearing the rude
comments in person.

What you do to handle cyberbullying and be polite online: