(Photo: Luke van Zyl/Unsplash)
Russian bots. Fake accounts. Catfishing. Social media is a minefield right now. To the point that this 17-year-old is concerned about the even younger generation.
When I first signed up for Instagram, I was in the fifth grade. My mom and I argued regularly about how much of my life I was sharing with the wrong people.
She’d sit on the couch, gripping my phone, and go through every single one of my followers. She grilled me on who I knew and how I knew them, and then deleted strangers and even friendly acquaintances one by one. At the time, I was super mad.
But now, I’m in high school. And when I look at my little brother’s Instagram use — it frightens me. When I saw that he had 1000 followers — I was shocked — and even a little impressed. But then I realized, there was no way my 13-year-old brother knew one thousand people. Who are these followers? Are they even real people?
I feel strange getting all protective of my younger brother’s Instagram. But now, in the Wild West of social media use and privacy restrictions — I guess my mom was right.