Benefits and Limitations of Surveillance in Social Networking Sites

Benefits and Limitations of Surveillance in Social Networking Sites
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Traditionally, surveillance had been synonymous with the gathering of private information by the government from the public due to the differences in power of having information over another; however, due to social networking sites, surveillance became a normalized aspect of society since viewing of personal information is allowed where people often take advantage of to learning more about an individual (Allmer, Fuchs, Kreilinger & Sevignani, 2013). Additionally, the same implications of gathering and assessment of information as a means towards the advantage or disadvantage of a particular group of people or individuals, with small differences depending on kind of people under surveillance (Allmer et al., 2013), which includes self-surveillance, lateral surveillance and mass surveillance.
Due to this emerging digital culture, social networking site surveillance had been thought to be a great concern in the digital society because it can lead to many negative implications such as data abuse and indiscriminate leak of other people’s personal information (Allmer et al., 2013). Although surveillance raised violation regarding privacy of the public, surveillance can also uphold protection and prevention against crimes such as terrorism and other criminal acts. In this paper, the instances of self-surveillance, lateral surveillance, and mass surveillance on social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter or dating websites will examined to determine the benefits and limitations of each surveillance type.
Benefits of Self-surveillance
The main benefit of self-surveillance is that it can improve a person’s self-care in the physical, mental, and social aspects. In physical health benefits, modern society promotes the use of multiple self-tracking device to monitor the health fitness of a person (Sanders, 2017). Every year, technology ranging from calorie indicating wristwatches to underwear that can monitor the irregularities of breathing are used by the people to be aware about their health and any potential risk that comes with knowing the negative implications in measuring vital signs that is beyond the normal level (Sanders, 2017). People are observed to share pictures about their daily exercise in many ways to promote their healthy lifestyle and contribute to the awareness of others so that people could also learn the benefits of monitoring personal health and be involved in health care activities.
In the mental benefits, the continuous self-surveillance can lead to a person’s preferred body image, which then improves the confidence of a person in engaging to his/her day to day activities (Duffy & Chan, 2018). Also, monitoring devices helps a person to be aware about the trends in beauty and fashion, then act accordingly about the preferences in style and taste that further boost a person’s satisfaction about their body image, which in turn improve mood and reduce anxiety (Sanders, 2017). In social media, people also share their fashion statement to gather feedback to improve the self and acceptance in certain groups of people that further boost a person’s social self-co...