Yesterday, I read about a new social networking app on your cell phone called Foursquare. It taps into your phones GPS system to let people know where you are and it’s all in the form of a game. You can receive status and awards for visiting a certain place more than once and your friends can know where you are at all times. It even shows a picture of you so anyone can find you. Here’s my problem. The robber down the street can log in and see where you are and know you’re not home and rob your house or the kidnapper can come kidnap you. This is the worst idea I have ever heard. There was a lot of controversy a while back when the original GPS first came out because hackers were hacking into the system and finding and killing people all through their GPS. How is this any different? It’s worse actually because there’s no hacking involved. It’s so much easier now to find someone and kill them. This game also shows what people are buying and where people are hanging out the most so now everyone will follow the lead of their friends and other strangers as opposed to leading their own lives. What are we teaching our children?
Not only that, but whatever happened to picking up the phone and saying “hey wanna meet at Starbucks” or writing a letter? No one even needs to communicate now because the Foursquare game tells you where to find your friends. I would like to make plans with my friends instead of stalking them or “running into them” at the nearest pizza joint because Foursquare told me they were there. The inventors of Foursquare say the original intention is to get friends together more often, which is all good, but that’s really scary to me. Am I alone here? I just think this game spells disaster in more ways than one.
MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter began this “need to know” craze to know what your friends are doing all the time. Twitter took that extra step and made social networking ridiculous because the only thing you can do on Twitter is tell people what you’re doing or what’s happening. Some use it for good like publicity or news and some just want to say they just finished their laundry. Either way, those 3 social networking sites didn’t bother me to the point where I feared for my life. If you wanted your info private, it was easy to do so, but not any longer. Not with inventions of games like Foursquare. I do have a Facebook and MySpace page, but I use them to stay connected with the friends I approve and the rest of my info is private to anyone else. I read in a NY Times article that not too long ago people were too scared to use their real names and pay for things online let alone give intimate details. Now people dish their info out like it’s nothing. I don’t think people understand that the threats that once scared us before are still very present. I’m moving to Canada or something because they don’t have the internet.
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