Sociological impacts of social media surveillance

Social Media Surveillance
Students Name
Institutional Affiliation
Given the current advancements in technology, a substantial number of individuals have one or more social media accounts. The social media platforms are considered to be a place where an individual can have fun or gain information regarding certain items. For instance, digital marketing has focused on such platforms as the main medium for passing information. However, surveillance of people's social media activities has changed that perception. Some people consider such surveillance as a way of intruding on a person's privacy. The surveillance team believes that it is a way of cubing bad behavior that might result from the use of such platforms. Therefore, this paper will focus on discussing the sociological, legal, and psychological impacts of social media surveillance as well as the sociological approach as the one with the greatest impact on public perceptions.
Sociological impacts of social media surveillance
Human beings tend to be aware of their environment and everything that goes on around them. Surveillance is bound to occur in every social system. Such surveillance might have both positive and negative impacts on the system. In the case of social media surveillance, a substantial number of individuals don't know about its existence. Besides, other social media users are aware of the fact that their social media activities are being monitored. Such monitoring has resulted in positive sociological impact in that it upholds the norms of the society. Regardless of the advancements in technology, certain patterns in society ought not to be changed. For instance, children should grow up expressing the right morals. Therefore, social media surveillance helps in filtering out bad content, hence imposing a positive sociological impact. For instance, Facebook has an automated feature that detects pornographic material, thus preventing the user from uploading it. It is hard to rule out that children will not access such material. An individual can lie about their age while creating a social media profile (Lee, 2011). Hence, the chances are high that one of the people who could have accessed such material is a minor. Pornographic content ends up messing up the minds of young people, thus making them prone to sexual abuse. Such surveillance has, therefore, done a great job in maintaining the patterns of societal norms.
Besides, the surveillance on a user's browsing history aids in the process of identity creation. Identity creation is highly encouraged by targeted advertising (David & Thom Shanker, 2014). Through such kind of surveillance, social media users can take advantage of digital marketing in advertising their products and having access to items that could have taken them a lot of time to find. Through the browsing industry, organizations can create the identities of individuals, hence, making it easy for them to do targeted advertising. Through the creation of identities, a person can gather the information that would clarify the preferences of the person whose identity has been created (Danniele, 2011). As a result, this makes it easy for society to run business activities. Given the era of digital marketing, a lot of people prefer online shop...