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-concept and overall perception of having a good body image.
In social benefits, if a person is self-aware about the potential harm of posting a statement, he/she can prevent bad impressions from the people that are reading the post (Duffy & Chan, 2018). All statements made or shared in the social media sites create a digital footprint that has both positive and negative implications about the digital identify of an individual. The goal of self-surveillance in social media sites is to not look bad. Being self-aware is then crucial in creating a sense of identity, self-presentation, and forming social relationships that is acceptable in the online community, especially in the digital age where an individual’s posts can make or break a person’s online credibility.
Limitations of Self-surveillance
One limitation of self-surveillance is the engagement to dishonest acts like presenting false information about the self (Ogunfowora, Bourdage, & Nguyen, 2013). People usually want the positive aspects of a person and often avoid any negative image, especially in social media sites. Based on the benefits mentioned, most of the effects of self-surveillance affects a person’s view about himself/herself; however, most of the time, people fail to achieve their expected self-image, thus, potentially engage into presenting false information about themselves and their achievements whether it is material wealth or bodily health. This is true especially in the trending beauty and fashion industry, where they usually set an unachievable standard of beauty, which then contributes to a negative self-image and anxiety of a person.
Due to the manipulative aspects of presenting the self, people often engage in impression management to attempt in influencing the reactions of other people through the use of edited images and ideas that they post, which other people believed to be genuine (Duffy & Chan, 2018). According to the study of Ogunfowora, Bourdage, & Nguyen (2013), those who highly monitor themselves are observed to be more aware about the social environment and adjust their behaviors in order to be accepted by others while those who have low degree of self-surveillance are more consistent in attitude, emotion, and disposition, thus more true about themselves, where other people have minimal effect on their self-esteem.
Since self-surveillance is good in creating social relationships, people often lie about true intentions and engage in releasing deceptive information social media sites to build romantic relationships (Ogunfowora, Bourdage, & Nguyen, 2013). This is true with people that has high insecurity and engage in impression management and image management behaviors. Based on the information gathered about self-surveillance, there may be more significant negative implications of self-surveillance than its potential benefits due to rampant dishonesty in social media sites.
Benefits of Lateral Surveillance
Since there is perceived risk in believing the information that is presented by another person, especially in social media site, lateral surveillance is important in peer monitoring to alleviate skepticism about the credibility of another person (Adrejevic, 2002). According to Andrejevic (2002), lateral surveillance is then to be understood as the use of surveillance tools or practices to verify the veracity of information, rather than institutions or personalities that keeps track of one another. The most common and simplest form of lateral surveillance is the background checking online. Background checks are important espec...