Now here’s an interesting idea. Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll, by Emily Nussbaum, is the lead article in New York Magazine (Feb. 12, 2007 issue) and it’s about the new generation gap between our students and us. They have no problems smearing themselves all over the web, we worry about our privacy.
More young people are putting more personal information out in public than any older person ever would and yet they seem mysteriously healthy and normal, save for an entirely different definition of privacy. From their perspective, it’s the extreme caution of the earlier generation that’s the narcissistic thing. Or, as Kitty put it to me, “Why not? What’s the worst that’s going to happen? Twenty years down the road, someone’s gonna find your picture? Just make sure it’s a great picture.”
We worry about how their life stories (and pictures of them on Facebook drinking) will be misused. They assume people will understand the context and understand them better. Perhaps if everyone is doing it they will be private in the crowd. Or they will realize their parents and profs are getting into Facebook and move off.