On Oct. 27 the Lewis B. O’Donnell Oz Media Summit touched upon a topic college students know all too well: social media. The platform for the discussion was a look at how social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are changing the way communication and art fields work.

The good points made: social media is a great tool for creating opportunities and advertising someone’s work. The downside: the always ellusive debate on how much social media has taken over people’s lives and its overall invasiveness.

Panelist and actress Diana Preisler touched on this when she said people will be vocal on social media about what they do not like right away because “everyone has a microphone” when it comes to social media.

In 2015 the Pew Research Center found that of American adults, 65 percent have a social networking account, up seven percent from when the center started collecting statistics on social media in 2005. To put this in perspective, 65 percent is approximately two-thirds of the American population or around 214 million people.

Of these people, young adults, anyone ranging between 18 and 29, are the most likely to use social media networks according the report. These ages are times when young adults are likely to be in college as well. So when discussing how invasive social media can be in peoples’ lives, it is not uncommon to look at the generation that has grown up as social networking sites have grown up too, one student stated during the question and answer session.

Michael Yoon, a communications manager at Princeton University, pointed out that people are constantly thinking about communicating through social media and putting something out there, but may not always be thinking about the other aspects, like whether the content posted is professional. He mentions that future employers check these sites                                                                                                                                    to see what is not on someone’s resume, so the email partyanimmal@gmail.com is not something you should have connected to a social media account.

Maya Brown, another panelist and an Oswego State visiting theater professor noted that intrusive people can be on social media and how frightening it is that people are continuously on the lookout for the latest news on celebrities and their personal lives. This is something that goes hand-in-hand with generations that have grown up using social media sites. The posts, the tweets, the Snapchat stories no longer lend themselves to privacy. People’s lives are open textbooks on the internet for anyone to check out and read.

Another panelist, composer, George Ginanopoulos, that while social media creates a sense of a larger community it has gotten to the point where people are posting so much about themselves and what is happening in their lives that a decent conversation turns bland. There is nothing to talk about face-to-face anymore. Instead of calling someone and having a conversation, people are pulling their phones out of their pockets and clicking the Facebook app to see what is on their feed for the day and more often than not people have posted every minute of their life to one social media outlet or another.

The most important point of the talk came from moderator Sean McAllister, who said having every aspect of your life out there leads to certain situations, a reference to what recently happened with Kim Kardashian in Paris. He makes a valid point too. What people post is out there forever and for anyone to find. There needs to be this supplemental consciousness reminding people of that before they post their latest drinking photo while in college or decide to write a derogatory statement in someone’s comments.

Social media is not the devil in disguise unless someone makes it out to be.