Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy

Posted on February 12, 2007 by C Lin
Culture | Leave a Comment

Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another. - New York Magazine

Here’s an interesting article from New York Magazine about online users who have multiple profiles and blogs who are increasingly alienating their parents generation. The use of these social networking tools has changed the way we communicate with one another and how we are perceived by our friends. It’s interesting to me to think about how this will affect the new generation who are starting blogs and profiles at a very young age. How will it affect their communication to real people in real life? Also, in the virtual world you have control over how you want to be perceived; you become your own simulacrum, if you will. What happens when you quickly realize that you have no control in the real world of how people perceive you? And finally something that has affected me personally—how do you deal with getting ‘upset’ online in real life? For example, questions I’ve asked myself: why am I not in the top ten of a certain friend’s Myspace top friends list? Why is my ex-boyfriend contacting me through Myspace even though I don’t want to talk to him? It got so bad that at one point I had to commit ‘Myspace suicide’ because my real self couldn’t handle it. These are real emotions, not virtual ones!

Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll