Too Much Information

In our technology driven society we are constantly hearing about the ways the internet, social media, etc. is affecting our everyday lives. Whether this affects us positively or negatively, the way we communicate using technology is extremely impactful. I recently watched the movie Catfish and it open my eyes to the negative side of social media. The movie is a documentary focused around a young photographer living in New York City named Nev Schulman. The entire movie is said to be completely true. Nev begins to receive paintings of his own photography from a so called child prodigy named Abby. Abby’s mother then began to contact Nev, and so did her older sister and brother, all through Facebook. Nev even began a romantic relationship with the sister via phone, Gchat, and Facebook. Nev began to question the family and decided to take a trip to their hometown in Michigan. Once he arrived at the house he saw that the entire family was a fraud. Abby’s mother had created all of the paintings and created multiple fake Facebook pages using pictures from other people’s profiles. After watching this documentary I was slightly disturbed that something like this could happen with social media. After double checking my Facebook privacy settings I vowed to always be careful when connecting with others over the internet.