Philadelphia Inquirer’s Kristen A. Graham deserves credit for writing about teenagers and MySpace and not putting out yet another sexual-predator, obscenity, fear-fest as so many others have.
She parses the real issue that few fellow technologists address or want to concern themselves with – how MySpace has empowered millions of children to share their private lives in full public view, the repercussions of which are not yet understood.
In fact, I’ve only seen one post, by Scott Karp, and he was met with a chorus telling him he didn’t get it or that “no one has privacy anyway so who cares”.
One oh his critics attempted to reduce the concern to that of a parent allowing the child to ride a bike, and of course we let our children ride bikes. So why not allow them participate on MySpace? Shoot – we should be encouraging both right?
How great it would be if it were that simple.
When you address privacy concerns on MySpace (or Xanga, or any other social media platform), you MUST address the nature of the web – when you post you are not simply sharing that participation with those who visit your site, but you you are contributing to a store of information that is cached on servers you don’t know of, syndicated to places you have no control over, retrievable, sortable, and searchable again and again and in perpetuity. Forever.
Sure sexual predators are a concern, but threats to living so publicly – in such a scale – permanently – are manifold.
The job we mysteriously couldn’t get. The date who ditched us for some unknown reason. The apartment application denied. The business loan we were turned down for. The incapability of moving on from past mistakes since anyone can now retrieve them and use them for their purposes. That new ‘friend’ of ours telling us about the new shoes that we just have to buy.
Imagine if your credit report was in public view. If you could not get a report of who was requesting it. Think about it.
That’s small fry in comparison to what we are *willingly* doing here.
I’m not some Luddite. I’ve had a web presence since 1996 and a blog since 1998. I don’t know many who have lived so openly on the web. But I do keep somethings close to chest and off my blog, understanding, long ago, the responsibility I had to my employers, my friends, my family, and myself – long term.
I’ve attempted practice, over the years, the good advice Rebecca Blood gives in the article:
“people forget they are publishing when they are blogging. It feels personal, it feels like a conversation – but it’s not.”
In today’s TMI age, it’s a given that that new boyfriend or girlfriend, that recruiter for the job you desperately want, is going to Google you, she said. Then they’ll find out that you’ve written about how you keep multiple sex partners and play endless rounds of Minesweep on company time.
“Whoever you don’t want to read your blog – your mom, your boss – will probably find it. Keep that in mind,” she advised.
You need to wonder why others in the digerati don’t share her concerns… maybe she sounds too old fashioned? Too old school?
Maybe Rebecca Blood just doesn’t get it?
The price we’re all going to pay is huge.
Karl,
I’ve got a 14 year old niece who thinks exactly the same way Rebecca warns against thinking. It is going to be huge, because, at 14, you’re just not equipped to deal with certain consequences.
And the worst thing is that most parents won’t know how to hack into their children’s myspace blogs to find out what’s actually happening in their lives. (Something I had to help my sister accomplish a few months ago — it boggles the mind the things you can find on those blogs).
I’m not a parent, but I am a teacher, and feel very protective of my 7th grade students. On one hand, I love them getting on the web, looking at blogs, and thinking about different topics. The more they read, the more informaed they are as people. I think it’s important for them to know about the matters that will effect their lives so deeply.
Still, I worry constantly about them meeting up with the wrong element on line. I’m a huge believer in free speech, and try to impart that to them, but I know that saying too much on the web can be dangerous. It’s a fine line, and I and don’t know where it should be drawn. I just know that I have definitely feel the tension between the need to protect the children under my tutelage and the need to protect the rights and education of those same children.
Howard, I have a relative, an early teen who thinks the same way as well, and it worries me.
Scott, I pretty much agree with you, and do think there is a balance here that all of us are negotiating. I’m a free speech absolutist.
While there may be some of your current readers who are a threat – it is probably comparable mathematically to that of any group or gathering.
It’s those who data mine you or find you in a search engine 10 years down the line that concern me. Your future creditors. Your future employers. Etc.