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Social Media Ethics
By Shayan Alam Khan
We all have seen in movies and heard from parents, grandparents or great parents that 20th century was considered as the simplest era. The life afterwards was so simple, but expenditure was big for a family, because majorly all families had 5-10 children, so you can think of the expenditure. But there was absence of social and family ethics. Anyone could easily interfere in anyone else’s life specially the elders, like they had a right to interfere.
Technological Revolution
That era has taught us many things, for example, how to respect elders and not to disobey them etc. But! There is a border in human beings also. We need to learn and teach others respectfully, no matter they are our elders or not, that human beings do have some borders in their life. You cannot impose your irrelevant decision on your priors whether they are your children or your blood relatives.
OK! In 1994, the smartphones came into being in the world. The very first app for social media platform was invented in 1997 named as ‘SixDegrees.com”, which allowed its user to set up the profile, creation of friend lists and to send message just like Facebook (which wasn’t there at that time).
The cell phone wasn’t enough common in sub-continent at that time, so the people didn’t know how to react or how to swallow the start of technology revolution, not even the younger generation at that time. The Nokia 3310 was the biggest hit at that time but was too much simple, even the janitor or farm people knew how to operate it.
With the advent of 21st century, the revolution has begun and goes on till end of the world. The tech giants, like, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google, LinkedIn and many more have given the world more and more comfort and ease but created the black hole and heaven for cyber criminals at the same time.
The study makes its way like a water, it got spacious and created many more opportunities especially in technology. The technological revolution goes on, the black hole is expanding more and more in the form of social media. WhatsApp, majorly public messaging and calling app has taken place of various application worldwide, for example skype. Skype use to be great at the moment, but since the acceleration kept increasing the various apps lagged behind.
Attention Concerns
Following are some areas of concerns that need discussion for increasing awareness and implementing country-wise cyber laws and personal privacy governing use of social media apps.
- Data privacy
- Transparency
- Ethics in Communication
Data Privacy
Since we all got invaded by our elders in our personal life privacy still in 2022 just like in 20 centuries, same happens but digitally. In today’s era, as we discussed earlier, the criminals like hackers are roaming freely and are much more talented than gov IT ministry professionals. They can easily put their nose in our main accounts like Facebook and easily can hack. One of the techniques I heard is that, they can put the “sheet which obviously disguised in our like, for example, on google, and once we login, they can easily know what password email and verification question we did, just like in movies, they put plastic transparent sheets on passcode machine to get the passcode and once the guard moves here and there, they can easily pull it out. But still, we can deal with the hackers whether they are black hat or white hat by learning the skill of cyber security or by contacting the authorities.
* Reference: Escape Plan movie.
Transparency
Transparency is one of the most important things in business or in routine formal or informal conversation or assignments. If it is missing, there would be a major flaw or disappointment in near future. Number 1 rule is considered to be transparent in business for success.
Ethics in Communication
As we take care of feelings for other opposite persons in the daily life while we meet them physically, we should take it with care, also when we meet them digitally. Now, in these current days, there is a vast technology which can help us physically represent in front of others like in “Metaverse”. We and other people have to learn the art of conversation to be straight forward, we cannot allow the people to deliver the bad news and throw it straight away, instead, it has to be the good and positive and rephrased in a way that it becomes professionally deliverable. Personally speaking, if emoji’s haven’t been invented, it always feels like we or opposite person is shouting or scolding or being rude with us. The emoji’s helped us too much to share our facial expressions in chat “written format”.
For example:
- You are fired, no need to come from tomorrow! (bad straight forward way)
- You can find more good and professional environment rather than the one here. You can find the more ways and be able to unlock your brain gates and can explore your talent and potential by switching to new place and by meeting new people and working in more professional environment which may be flexible, and comfortable (Good straight forward way).
