About Social Networking

I understand why social networking is so popular. It can be a great way to connect with friends, relatives, and co-workers, meet new people, and catch up with old acquaintances. It's brought families together, reunited long-lost pals, solved crimes, and allowed for organized protest. Facebook and Twitter aren't two of the most popular sites in the world for nothing. But social networking isn't for everyone, and I'm proof of that.

I am a very private person. When I was a child, I learned a classic lesson: Don't talk to strangers. In elementary school, I got acquainted with computers and the Internet at around the same time they started becoming relevant to the public - the late nineties. There, a variation of stranger danger was made clear: Don't share personal information online. If you give away details about yourself, people can find you. You could get stalked or mugged or have your identity stolen. And that lesson stuck - to this day I am very cautious when it comes to giving personal information of myself away. Only online stores get my address (and I always prefer to give my PO Box). I keep my "real" life and "Internet" life firmly separate. Until I made this account, I never used my real name for a website (with one exception - I had the username "Bryan" on Rate My Kitten, a cat photos website I joined when I was around 11 years old). And I absolutely refuse to post a photo of myself on the Internet, and I will probably never allow it. It's a sticking point for me. I don't like putting myself out there.

Because of my cautiousness and love of privacy, I have managed to avoid a lot of the issues other people may have with social media. I'm not going to be persecuted for voicing a volatile opinion on Twitter. I'm not going to have my personal information stolen by a Facebook hacker. And I won't have my photo get ripped from a personal page and used somewhere else - most likely in an unflattering situation - without my permission.

I don't have a Facebook or a Twitter or a MySpace account, and I only joined Google+ because I accidentally created this account on Google instead of Blogger (Google owns Blogger, for those who don't know). My Google+ page is blank - and blank it shall remain. I have a YouTube account, but I don't mention my name and I certainly don't put up videos of myself. I'm far from the only person who isn't interested in the Internet 2.0 invasion of privacy. It's just not for me.

Here are 13 cases where Facebook made people lose their jobs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/fired-over-facebook-posts_n_659170.html#s115707&title=Swiss_Woman_Caught