There is no doubt that everyone has two lives, the actual life, and internet life. We might not be able to have a perfect life but when it comes to internet (or social media) life everyone can enjoy their dream life. Most people want to pause their life, others want to fast forwards whereas most of us want to get a restart button. It is commonly said that all the best buttons belong to the same father, delete button. On Facebook, the most popular button is the unfriend button, whereas on Instagram and Twitter the favorite button is the unfollow button. The first thing that most of us do after we have a bad experience is to unfriend and unfollow them from all the social media sites but the algorithms are not set that way. You might still find them in your suggestion list or end up revising their comments here and there. In short, unless you don’t block them, you are still connected to them in one way or another.
When blocking is not enough, sometimes most of us wish to have a fresh start. A fresh start in life is best for privacy, security, and sanity at the same time. Since Facebook has started the memory features, more and more users are wishing to have a new start because of their old unedited pictures and naive opinions. When it comes to the internet, most of us know that you might forget what you did in your life or where you were last summer, but the internet never forgets. Signing up as a 15 years old self, no one knew these social networking apps would become data behemoth and what’s even worse is that these platforms might use the information that users willingly provide, for their own profits. Moreover, this is not only an alarming situation for teenagers who are signing in now but also for people who signed in decades ago when social media sites were known to be just harmless sites for communication. The data that we share is tracked by the search engines for advertisement, marketing and for tracking the audience.
Currently, the user can easily download and see everything that they have shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks, but they cannot move it anywhere. The only solution for erasing the data is to delete the account permanently, which means that you will no longer be able to use your account. Experts say that there are two options that can help you clear out the data, the first option is to take your time and delete everything one by one and the second option is to use apps like TweetDelete where you can provide access to your account and the app will delete everything one by one. This obviously raises a question on the privacy and the security because the access will be given to the third-part app.
Out of all technology giants, Google is probably better (though not perfect) when it comes to providing the access and opportunity to delete the information. Regardless of the option, the user is still required to delete everything manually, however, this might consume too much time and energy while providing access to third-party apps can make the user vulnerable to the privacy breach. Since there is no other way to clean up the information that you have been accumulating since you first started using the internet, the only way is to delete your account and restart it every now and then. This is not only good for your sanity but also a good cleansing process for your social life.
Illustration: Freepik / Pikisuperstar
Read next: How to Spot Social Media Scams (infographic)
When blocking is not enough, sometimes most of us wish to have a fresh start. A fresh start in life is best for privacy, security, and sanity at the same time. Since Facebook has started the memory features, more and more users are wishing to have a new start because of their old unedited pictures and naive opinions. When it comes to the internet, most of us know that you might forget what you did in your life or where you were last summer, but the internet never forgets. Signing up as a 15 years old self, no one knew these social networking apps would become data behemoth and what’s even worse is that these platforms might use the information that users willingly provide, for their own profits. Moreover, this is not only an alarming situation for teenagers who are signing in now but also for people who signed in decades ago when social media sites were known to be just harmless sites for communication. The data that we share is tracked by the search engines for advertisement, marketing and for tracking the audience.
Currently, the user can easily download and see everything that they have shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks, but they cannot move it anywhere. The only solution for erasing the data is to delete the account permanently, which means that you will no longer be able to use your account. Experts say that there are two options that can help you clear out the data, the first option is to take your time and delete everything one by one and the second option is to use apps like TweetDelete where you can provide access to your account and the app will delete everything one by one. This obviously raises a question on the privacy and the security because the access will be given to the third-part app.
Out of all technology giants, Google is probably better (though not perfect) when it comes to providing the access and opportunity to delete the information. Regardless of the option, the user is still required to delete everything manually, however, this might consume too much time and energy while providing access to third-party apps can make the user vulnerable to the privacy breach. Since there is no other way to clean up the information that you have been accumulating since you first started using the internet, the only way is to delete your account and restart it every now and then. This is not only good for your sanity but also a good cleansing process for your social life.
Illustration: Freepik / Pikisuperstar
Read next: How to Spot Social Media Scams (infographic)
