Did you know about 40 percent of 18-35 year olds claim they regret  sharing personal information online, according to ikeepsafe.org. People nowadays, especially teenagers, are sharing just about anything on social media: Instagram, Facebook, Kik, Snapchat, etc (ikeepsafe.org). Often, when they post information on social media, they don’t know they’re giving away information to stalkers and hackers. To prevent this, teenagers should be educated about this and what could happen to them.

Teens spend about 7.5 hours on the internet per day (Ahuja, washingtonpost.com). Much of this time is spent on social media, where kids share their real name, some interests, their birthday, where they live, their school, their relationship status, and photos and videos of themselves. They sometimes don’t even make their account private or allow friends of a friend see their posts (Mclane, adammclane.com).

One way sharing too much on social media is dreadful, is that you will likely regret it later. About 40 percent of 18-35 year olds have posted something personal on social media and later regretted it. 66% of them even believe that youth have no personal privacy and would post anything (ikeepsafe.org).

Sharing personal information on social media can hurt you emotionally and rob you of your privacy, money, etc. Sharing too much information can make identity theft easier. You can also damage your own reputation by posting certain things online(Elliott, socialmediatoday.com). 57 percent of young people also think others post too much and feel robbed of privacy (ikeepsafe.org).You can even be cyberbullied if you post something very personal that others might find funny (Elliott, socialmediatoday.com).

Some may argue sharing a lot of information could help people. Businesses are publishing content information and are getting more customers (Moon, blog.kissmetrics.com). People also want to be in the loop for everything (Seiter, blog.bufferapp.com). People also say sharing on social media helps build and improve relationships with friends and family (case.org)

Often when people post information on social media, they don’t know that they’re giving away information to stalkers and hackers. To prevent this, teenagers should be educated about this and what could happen to them. Teens post the most personal information online (Obeidallah, cnn.com). They don’t always know who reads and see what they post (Conner, forbes.com). They often regret it later and don’t have personal privacy (ikeepsafe.org). “We all need to be careful about what we write online, whether on LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, or other places where digital information has a shelf-life of many years and can be copied and pasted by anyone, anywhere” (Conner, forbes.com).