To Check-In Or Not To Check-In

Social networks took us all by surprise, Okay not all of us but most of us and all of a sudden we were able to share what we feel with the people we care or don’t care about. We are at the peak of the ‘sharing age’ and in this age sharing is not only taken as caring but also as things like showing off, looking for gratitude and many other things.

I totally understand why someone tweets about what is going on in there lives or posts a picture on facebook while having a fun day at a nice place what I don’t understand however is why someone would feel obliged to share their location every now and again with of course their friends. This brings me to the argument I had about whether one should check in or not check in at a given place and why.

Before I go ahead with my argument I want to say that I love location based social network to an extent that my final year project at Engineering school was a location based social network. Therefore, with that in mind I would like to give my opinion about Checking in at given places and may be why I think you shouldn’t check-in that often.

Take a scenario where for example it is a Thursday morning I wake up very early check-in at my place using Swarm (with a caption “Getting Ready For Work”), I get to work at around 8:00 AM (“Got to Earn the Money”) at around 10:30 AM is when I have my breakfast so I check in at a Rolex Stand (” Picking a Rolaaa”), Lunch time I head out to Cafe Javas (“Having a Chicken BBQ, yum yum”), I get back to office check in again and later in the evening I check-in at Iguana (“Picking my USB charger, LOL because it’s a Thursday”) at around 10:00 PM at night I check back at home ( “#PashMode”) and imagine I do this every single day but different routines.

I asked a few of my friends why they check-into a given place am most of them replied that it is because they want to show off and this is true for most of us who use these apps because according to my story a friend of mine who doesn’t have a Job will feel bad because am getting ready for work, a broke friend will feel bad because Am having a Rolaa for breakfast, Chicken BBQ for lunch and well some of my bosses will feel bad that I might have a hangover Friday morning and not be very productive but on the bright side a stalker will always know where I am and what am doing and may be they will walk into the bar and pretend they are surprised to see me at that bar, and go on about this bar being their favorite and all this is the name of small talk.

I love checking into places but I stopped doing it because I don’t want to be predictable, I understand I have a predictable life but I want that to at least be private to me and only those I choose to share with. What if and this is a big WHAT IF, someone want to kill you or rob your house when you are away, because they have this app and they are your friends they will know you can’t be in 2 places at once if you are having lunch at Javas then your home is not occupied or they will track your movement and this will make things for them much easier.

Social Sites have made us go easy on our privacy, we offer everything for free because we get free apps and we forget that the only way these companies are making money from their business is by selling our information to third parties like big companies(consumer mainly) or even the government. I am not advocating for people not sharing what they are doing at specific places but before you check-into a given place ask yourself why you are really checking in and if you think people will slightly care about your check-in.

I will end here for now but let me know what you think in the comments section.