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When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online
Not all kids react poorly to finding out they’ve been living an unwitting life online. Some are thrilled. In fourth grade, Nate searched his name and discovered that he was mentioned in a news article about his third-grade class making a giant burrito. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I was surprised, really surprised.” But he was pleased with his newfound clout. “It made me feel famous … I got to make new friends by saying, ‘Oh, I’m in a newspaper [online],’” he said. Ever since, he has Googled himself every few months, hoping to find things.
[...] Once kids have that first moment of realization that their lives are public, there’s no going back. Several teens and tweens told me this was the impetus for wanting to get their own social-media profiles, in an effort to take control of their image. But plenty of other kids become overwhelmed and retreat. Ellen said that anytime someone has a phone out around her now, she’s nervous that her photo could be taken and posted somewhere. “Everyone’s always watching, and nothing is ever forgotten. It’s never gone,” she said.
[...] Still, Jane—who, like all the other kids in this story, spoke to me with her parents’ permission—worries. She’s too young to navigate the web on her own, but she feels that a lot of what’s out there on the internet about her is beyond her control. “I don’t really like how people know things about me, and I don’t even know them,” she said. “Thousands and millions of things are out there maybe.” Andy, also 7, is always on the lookout for people who might take unflattering photos of him. He once caught his mother taking a photo of him sleeping and, another time, doing a silly dance. He immediately told her not to post it on Facebook, and she obliged. He felt the photos were embarrassing.
Remember your search engine is watching you when you search for yourself.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday February 21 2019, @01:34PM (2 children)
Who's side are you on here VLM? Or you just playing devil's advocate for the sheer hell of it?
The agencies and big corporations keeping the data forever is as much, if not more of a worry, as the general public having access. And determined individuals within that general public can certainly preserve your more embarrassing moments if they want to. Colleagues or frenemies are just a couple of examples.
If people believing that everyone can see it forever is what it takes to get them to actually give a tiny bit of a shit about it, then let them believe it! The risk is certainly there even if it's not highly probable.
As for scientific and historic information like the moon landings, that's the kind of data everyone, including the people directly involved, will want to be preserved. Why can't we just make that distinction before we share our data? When people are too young and irresponsible to make an informed choice, arguably they shouldn't be given unsupervised use of internet devices (and I'm talking real parental supervision not some sinister software surveillance--which is treating the problem with more of the same problem).
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 21 2019, @03:25PM (1 child)
The side of consistency.
One journalist clickbait encouraging anxiety that kids uninteresting social media is eternal or at least lasts multiple lifetimes.
vs
Another journalist clickbait encouraging anxiety that digital, or at least electronic, bit rot is so much faster than paper bit rot that we've even lost the moon landing video primary sources.
There's a somewhat separate issue, which I seem to agree with you on, of "I posted sexting nudes last week and this week the entire school has seen them" which is in fact bad for kids, arguably even worse for schoolteachers LOL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @07:55PM
But life is inconsistent.
At least it has consistently been shown to be.