Technology never fails to amaze me. Within five years, six different models of the iPhone have been released. Seven different models of the iPad have been released. Technology companies are in a never ending race to see who can come up with the coolest product. Facebook and Twitter seem to be changing every other day with a new (and most of the time, useless) feature.

Remember when Facebook was used just for connecting with friends? In its 8 year lifespan, Facebook has accumulated more than 1 billion users and adds between 600,000 to 700,000 users per day. InsideFacebook predicts that Facebook will hit the 200 million active viewers in March.

My fascination with technology goes past all of the fancy products. Social media is getting creepier and borderline invasive. We’ve all heard the drill: once you put something on the Internet, it’s there forever. Facebook adds features that seems to make it easier to — for a lack of a better word — stalk people.

Thanks to the check in feature, you can tell exactly where people are. Assuming people don’t understand how to tweak their privacy features so incriminating details can’t be found, it’s too easy to find out information about people.

Those are probably the people who have at least 10 status updates a day, half of those a journal entry of literally everything they do that day. Sure, we can adjust privacy settings, but those people who you let see your personal information have access to that forever. Not only can that result in messy situations, but employers have tricks of passing those privacy settings and going straight to your profile.

Foursquare is an app where you check into places and receive points for each check-in and compete against your friends to see who gets the most points. Think about it. If you really wanted to find somebody, all you need to do is follow their Foursquare.

Granted, you do need to be friends on Foursquare before you can find out any of this information, but if you piss off someone or burn some bridges, the last thing you’re going to think about would be defriending them on Foursquare. Hopefully, they’re not insane enough to want to stalk you, but you can never be too careful.

Beyond the typical social media outlets, new apps are being created everyday that give people new ways to find others. Tinder is a new app that allows users to post their picture, and browse through the photos of other Tinder users until they find someone near them they’re attracted to. Tinder uses Facebook to access your name and the GPS on your phone to find your location. Users can browse photos of people near them until they find a person they like. They can “like” the photo, which gives the other user a chance to reply back. If there is a mutual like, users can send a message.

Maybe this is just a joke, but I have a lot of skepticisms about an app that only gives someone a name, age and photo. Your impression about this person is based solely on their appearance. What if you took a chance and decided to meet someone and they turned out to be a jerk? Even worse, what if they’re completely psycho and use the app to prey on gullible people? That seems paranoid, but I’ve come to find that unless you know someone personally, you cannot trust anything on social media.

In case you thought that Tinder was wacky, there’s an app called Lulu that basically allows women to rate men like restaurants. I wish I was joking. Built for women, by women, the app connects to your Facebook and allows women to rate all of their male Facebook friends. Women can rate men on their looks, sense of humor, commitment level, best and worst qualities and… ahem… abilities.

To me, this seems like a way for vindictive women to get back at either ex- boyfriends and past hookups in an extremely petty way. Unless you’re out of ways for getting back at somebody, or you really need a good laugh, don’t waste your time. In my opinion, this is an extremely creepy (and stereotypical) way of exacting revenge. I would even go so far as to saying it’s objectifying men, and isn’t that something that women don’t want men to do to them?

While our technology may be changing for the better, social media is not. What happened to just Facebook and Twitter? I normally like to take the “whatever floats your boat” attitude when it comes to social media, but there are creepy, new websites and lots of creepy people. This obviously isn’t a good mix. Bottom line: DO be careful, and DON’T be stupid.

——————————————————————————————-

Katie Henry is a senior in journalism and political science from Pella, Iowa.