What once seem to be extremely dangerous has now became a "must do" amongst people. Visiting a restaurant, lounge or event without pulling your phone out and checking-in has now become a routine. Our friends and followers must know the cool places were currently attending...otherwise what's the point of being there? Remember hearing stories about people's houses being broken into after posting that they were far away on vacation on social networking sites. This terrified me. When my friends started to pull out their smartphones everywhere we went, to check-in to Foursquare (a phone application where you win rewards and badges from checking in to certain places or checking in to one place often within other features), it just felt wrong. What if there was a stalker just waiting for a clue as to where you where? Ah!

Though checking-in should be use with precaution, knowing who is seeing your check-in's being very important, it is not that scary and it's actually fun!

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, a Princeton Survey Research Associate also found that check-ins are indeed very fun too many people. In a new study they actually found that Hispanics are the most frequent "checkiners" (Oxford, look out, I just created a new term) in the check-in services with 24% of check-ins coming from Hispanic smartphones. You know we want even "abuelita" to know that we are at the Marc Anthony concert. It does make sense for us to share our location just a little more often since our families are often spread out all over the world. Social media outlets like Facebook are sometimes the only way we keep in contact with our distant family who we cannot call everyday. Plus it's nice to know that cousin Rosa is at Flamenco Beach as we battle the winter snow attacking my face.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ among others have all joined in to the check-in craze. It almost feels like an obligation when posting pictures or updating a status. Pew showed that Facebook was actually ahead with 39% of people using the social network to show their locations. Foursquare, once the leader in check-in services dropped down to 18% this year, I thought being the Sherriff of Madison Square Park was actually really cool. One thing is for sure, we are all show offs who can't even go have a drink without telling everyone what cool bar we just discovered. But that's okay; we live in the era of simple technology, as the future might claim. Soon we will be flying around outer space checking in through just brainpower...whoa.