Validation is important to everyone. People feel the need to be accepted and appreciated by everyone else. With the spread of social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram, people can have access to validation in a much wider format. With a few taps on the screen of their smart phone, anyone can publish information abut what they’re doing. Most people love this form of instant “popularity”, but it leaves many people struggling to come up with the top posts and it causes people to constantly compare their own life to the lives of their friends.

Personally, I don’t like the pressure that these websites cause. The idea that you have to continuously keep everyone else updated on how exciting your life is seems a lot like bragging to me. So what if I didn’t go out with all of my friends and take an adorable picture? Does that make my day less productive than yours simply because I chose not to document it? No. Of course not, and yet that is the idea that is being put into everyone’s head.

With everyone taking and sharing pictures without a second thought comes the loss of privacy. People don’t ask for permission to release a photo they took of you; instead, they assume that like everyone else you want to have a public presence online. This morning I woke up to find that pictures of me had been posted on Facebook without my knowledge or consent. I was appalled, and yet there is really I can do about it without confronting the friend that posted them. I know that by most people’s standards, I am overreacting. The picture itself wasn’t the problem; in fact, it was a decent photo of me. The problem is that I had no control over it being put online for strangers to view.

The social media websites require no form of consent from the people whose images are being put out there. You can have your picture taken down, but it requires a whole process of contacting the website and requesting the image to be removed. I think that instead, there should be some form of permission that people have to give before the picture can be published in the first place. Without a system like this put in place, privacy is virtually a thing of the past.