Lifestyle

Twitter: Public or Private?

For a young person to not be a user of Facebook or Twitter is somewhat unheard of in the society we currently live in. Technology is shaping our lives, with social networking sites dominating a large amount of our internet use.

Twitter is becoming increasingly popular and is a great way of expressing our views in less than 140 characters. However, a question that I have been asking myself recently is: why do so many people choose to leave their Twitter profiles open to everybody?

Over the years, Facebook has allowed us to privatise our lives completely. We can now hide our friends, tagged photos, tagged comments and any picture we wish. Internet safety has forced us to take more care with what information we reveal. But, despite being able to privatise one social networking site, many people still choose to have their Twitter open.

Why is this? Surely people being able to read any tweet regarding our location, friends and interests is a lot more intrusive than allowing people to see pictures via Facebook. We see people everyday in the street but faces don’t reveal any personal information to us.

The Private vs Public Twitter profile is a difficult one which I myself have been torn between many times. Making my Twitter public allows people to retweet me, a rewarding feeling in itself but also publicises my views over the internet. It also allows people who share the same viewpoints to connect with each other. A good thing about this is naturally the chance to network with new people, but at the same time does talking to someone we don’t know lead back to the internet safety debate?

Twitter seems to be somewhat overlooked when it comes to internet safety, it is predominantly Facebook that parents become concerned about when their daughter or son is using it. However, I think Twitter can also reveal a lot of personal information which can be read by anyone.

What’s your opinion on this?

Is your Twitter public or private and why?

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