Social networking has become huge. Today it seems like everything is online. You can order a pizza, take a class, do you Christmas shopping, read the newspaper, apply for jobs, listen to music, and watch TV shows all online. So it shouldn’t be so shocking that our social lives would be online too. Unfortunately, I don’t think that we are always aware of the things that we are sharing online and down the road there may be some things that we regret.
I’ve had an account on almost any social networking site you can name of. When I was fourteen years old, my favorite was GreatestJournal. It was a clone site of LiveJournal (which I use now). I’ve always had a journal, a written one since I could write and it always astounded me when I would come across one of my journals from when I was 10 and read the things I wrote about. Embarrassing things, to say the least. But I always took comfort in the fact that no one but me could read these ridiculous things unless they were violating my privacy. Then I got the bright idea to start writing in an online journal. An unlocked, open and out there journal. Did I mention I was fourteen? The smallest things are so dramatic when you are a fourteen year old girl. Let’s not even go into the way that I typed because that alone was embarrassing (apparently, when I was fourteen spell check never crossed my mind!).
This all probably didn’t matter except that people could read it. They were my very personal thoughts being read by someone. Things that I could forget about were things other people would use to form an opinion of me. They could be things that these people would bring up to me at a later time. If they were smart and I said something insanely idiotic, they could take a screen shot and share it with the world again.
After a few years of me being a very active member of the site, GreatestJournal closed down. I moved on to LiveJournal with the thought in mind that whatever I posted would be locked, and in addition to that I would really have to censor myself. I would have to edit my post to make sure it wasn’t something that I wouldn’t want others to read. Those types of things belonged in my handwritten, hidden away, journal.
Lately, I don’t think people do that. I have a Facebook, which I’m constantly logged into. From my Blackberry, I’m always plugged in. But some of the things people choose to write on Facebook make me wonder what they were thinking when they wrote it. If you need any more proof that people really aren’t paying attention to what they’re writing, I suggest you visit Failbook (http://failbook.failblog.org/). It contains screenshots of what some people see when they log on to their Facebook accounts. Things that you probably shouldn’t share with the world, spread to the masses. Things that your future employers could find, your future husband or wife’s family can find, and even things your mother can probably see. I’m not saying we can’t express our ideas online, but my goodness, can we think twice before pressing the “share” button?
Hey alycopter! Isn’t it crazy all the stuff we can use the internet for. Its become a medium used for almost everything, but I must say Pizza Tracker is pretty awesome. But your right if we do virtually everything over the internet then why not make friends. But this is dangerous waters, because we don’t actually speak to the person face to face we can say things we maybe wouldn’t if we knew people were paying attention. Our generation was sort of born alongside this era of technology, so its been part of our knowledge since we were children. I think this influence drives every teenager to put things on the internet they probably shouldn’t. But I do think that at that time we really didn’t know much about how this info could be used or spread. When I was 16, I posted a bunch of drunken photos from a party, needless to say my mom found. It’s a hard lesson and not fun to learn, not to mention looking back its embarrassing. But I think that most everyone has the embarrassing online situation because you don’t know the consequences until something backfires on you. I also have a Facebook now and I try to keep everything I post on it professional because I know how many people are looking. People have gotten smarter when using these sites, but hopefully what you said can be a reminder. We always have to be careful and think before we hit send.
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