Please and thank you in advance 
Prompt: Should we make an effort to keep things private?
Because the rapid pace at which technology is developing and expanding, we are able to easily use technology to share information about anything and anyone. Nowadays, personal information-things like phone numbers and addresses-are open for everyone to see. Such lack of privacy is toxic, because once information is online, we do not have the power to control who views that information.
I, like most teenagers, used my social media account to not only post pictures and update statuses, but also to communicate. As a result, I used to leave my account relatively open to the public. Everything from my real name, birthday, and even phone number were accessible through my Facebook account.
I thought nothing of revealing personal details online until one day, I received a friend request and a private message from an unknown user. We had no mutual friends which immediately made me suspicious. However, the unknown user, who went by the name Taylor, seemed to have a perfectly normal profile. He had a few hundred friends and had posted many pictures of him living day to day life. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so we began to chat.
About a week after I started to interact with Taylor, I received a text message from an unknown number-it was Taylor. He had found my phone number on my Facebook and had proceeded to text me. A few days later, after I had told him I attended a small international school by my house, he located my school-address and name. I finally stopped communicating with Taylor when I realized that his actions were not only making me uncomfortable but also invading my privacy.
But, I had no one to blame. I, being a naive teenager, had exposed most of my information to all of Facebook to see. I made absolutely no effort to keep things private, and it was only after Taylor that I realized how easy it would have been to locate me based on the small bits of information on my Facebook. I don’t believe Taylor had ill intentions but had he approached me with hostile thoughts, I might have fallen victim to him, simply because I did not make an effort to keep things private.