Privacy In Today's World of Oversharing

      A prominent issue in the Persuaders was the fact that media has overtaken our lives, and advertisers and social media platforms know more information about ourselves than they should. Everywhere we go, we see ads that are catered to us, our interests, and a prediction on who we will become. If I look at something once, even click on an ad accidentally, I will see ads about that specific thing for weeks on end. For example, I regularly see ads about dresses and female-oriented products, which is creepy enough that the advertisers know my gender, and I clicked on an ad for shoes one time and those shoes would pop up on every page I visited on the internet. In addition, I would see ads about taking the SAT and ACT on social media, which is strange because I only looked things like that up on google, not social media. To me, this means that information I didn't even give out is being used and used in a way that ads are being catered towards me and my interests. I regularly get emails about net neutrality and left-leaning politics, both of which I've never expressed my opinion about online, but both are issues I concern myself with. The fact that advertisers are able to access my personal information and use it is really concerning to me and makes me feel extremely vulnerable and with a lack of privacy.
     However, this issue of privacy seems to be our world now, and there's not much we can do about it. I believe that this issue of privacy has gotten too out of hand to ever go back to an era where strangers didn't know about you and all of your interests and use it to make money, so the only way out is to just adapt to this present state of affairs. It seems impossible to truly hide everything about yourself, nor does anyone want to anymore. Everyone posts where they are and what they're doing and what they believe in every single second of the day, and no one seems at all willing to become a social recluse to avoid having their privacy infringed upon. This day and age is just going to be a time where everything is shared, even information we don't want to share. It's just something we are going to have to accept as the new normal, and whether that is good or bad, it remains to be seen.