Admittedly, I didn’t realize there was a power behind “likes”, both in the economic and social environment. Upon watching the documentary Generation Like (hosted by Douglas Rushkoff), I gained insight into the power that “likes” have. Simply clicking the like button on Facebook, on YouTube or virtually any site, generates a wide variety of information about yourself that is accessible to people or groups with the right means. The groups who would care about such information would be companies, companies want to know what you like so that they are able to create a profile that they think best describes you for the purposes of advertising the right things to you and making you want to purchase.

Though I believe that there are winners and that they are companies that sell and buy such information, I do not believe that there are losers in this situation – however, I don’t think that it won’t be that way for long. At the moment, we click “like” on websites because we want others to know that we like something so how can we be losers when we consciously know that we are giving up information to be seen by the public? However, we can become losers if companies giving away our “likes” information for profit start to move beyond that and give up more or more private information without us consciously being aware of it.

Above, I spoke about the economic power but the social power of “likes” is nothing to be scoffed at. “Likes” have become something like a scale that measures peoples’ popularity or social standing. Everyone strives to get more “likes” in an attempt to be more popular, to be more liked or to seem superior to others who can’t get as much likes as them. I think that teens are somewhat aware of the power of “likes” but perhaps they don’t see what it does to their views of people. A teenager that has a lot of “likes” is instantly a hit and becomes someone that others look up to. However, a teenager with little or no “likes” would be looked down on. I think that here is definitely a power behind “likes” and that it is still growing and can become something dangerous for the average person in terms of privacy and information.