REMEMBER THE ART OF PRIVACY

Sir,

Sometimes I take a moment and live my life backwards to ascertain how far I have come and how much has changed, the stupid things I have done. In my backward journey of life, one thing that dominates my series of events is how my life was before I joined the busy space of social networking. I can still remember that before I agreed to share with the world ‘what’s on my mind’, life was ‘normal’. 

I didn’t have the incessant pressure to tell the world what I was eating for breakfast, lunch or supper. I never saw it important to publish my location and my every move while I went about the daily tasks of life. My life before online life was private. Only those I call family and friends knew much about my life’s activities and unfolding events. Then I signed up on Facebook and everything changed. I was not only posting what was on my mind, but I also unknowingly became vulnerable and started to share my every day life. Then came the moment when my blissful Facebook life came to an end, things turned badly and I quickly remembered the art of privacy.

Social scientists will tell you that human beings are social animals and that means we have a need for other people to know what we are thinking, saying and doing, something which explains why we voluntarily publish information about ourselves online. 

Extraordinary

It is obvious that what finds its way to our timelines are happy moments and that which is extraordinary and the stuff we share gets interpreted differently from person to person. When we share our successes, how happy we are in our relationships and how ‘blessed’ we are, it is human nature that some are genuinely happy for you, while others just feel you’re bragging and wait for the moment when everything collapses. This is where one finds the conflicting idea about what one should and shouldn’t be posting online.

Well, it is rather not easy to say what’s okay and not okay because we live in a world driven by choice -  where everyone does everything they want with their lives –  but I have learnt that the moment your private life becomes public, it becomes the rest of everyone’s entertainment.

The moment you show the world what makes you extraordinary, it is the moment you give up privacy and that is dangerous to do. It is always a time-bomb threatening your fragile emotional life in that privacy is not just a reflexive act similar to breathing air or drinking water. Privacy is that shield which protects that which is personal to us as humans. It is not every detail of our lives that needs broadcasting. People should know of you, but not everything about you. 

P Dlamini

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