Privacy & the Digital Age

Privacy in the digital age is an important factor, and the issue of privacy has increasingly become a problem with the growth of technologies. As technologies develop, privacy has changed. We now live in a more commercialised society where our private lives are more often than not blurred in between.

Our less privatised lives highlight the greater surveillance that is put on us. We are easily tracked and watched in all areas of our lives. Security cameras, CCTV, and online social networking sites are the main areas in which privacy is becoming an issue and the ways in which we are being surveyed.

We often trade up aspects of our privacy to access sites such as Facebook which questions how much we really value our privacy. Facebook’s privacy settings are controlled by users. The settings a user uses is an issue as there are many cases where employers survey and track potential or current employees based on their Facebook profiles to understand a side of them they would otherwise not know about.

Security cameras are also all over today, whether or not we are conscious of its presence. They monitor what people are doing and are meant to keep society in order. But how much surveillance is too much? Despite the obvious usefulness of CCTVs in the area to create a safer community this jeopardises our privacy. If we’re being constantly watched, where do we get our freedom?

The less privatised world means that every move we make out on the street, or every click we make on the internet is being tracked by someone out there. Privacy in the digital age is becoming more and more complicated everyday and this makes it hard for people to know when they are being watched or not.