Loading ...By Wogan May
Pretty much since its inception, Facebook has been embroiled in privacy disputes — and a quick look at the scoreboard makes it easy to see why. The stories range from parents grounding their kids, to people losing their jobs over the things they post to the network.
None of it is helped by the fact that over the last 5 years, Facebook has become increasingly lax in its privacy measures. See this infographic for a clear demonstration of how “public” Facebook is today, as opposed to 2005. And with greater freedom, come greater problems.
I wonder, though, if all the issues people have with sharing and privacy aren’t simply issues because they’re not used to dealing with them. Human society has followed a pretty exponential growth curve in terms of technology (and the way it impacts our daily lives) — maybe we’ve finally reached a clear breaking point between the old guard and the new guard?
To hear your parents and grandparents tell it, they grew up among a few close friends, their neighbourhoods and their schools. They probably did some incredibly silly things, too — one of my uncles, for instance, borrowed his dad’s air rifle and promptly put a hole through his foot while showing off to his friends.
The difference back then was that things could be kept secret with relative ease. Maybe only his friends and his parents would know — and a few weeks later, the wound (and the memory) would pretty much be gone. It certainly made things easier later on in life, when your potential employers and life partners didn’t know about those things you wish you rather hadn’t done, but the internet is working against that. It’s bringing light (possibly too much light) to the things people would rather keep in the dark.
Today, it’s a completely different story. Children are growing up with online games, mobile and social networks, and the understanding that it’s natural to interact with people that aren’t physically there, and share things online, while making them accessible to perfect strangers. The networks are suddenly much bigger, and the memories are far more permanent.
The rule of thumb? The internet never forgets. It’s a rule that the older generations are having trouble with. Pick any technophobe who tried, for instance, sending a private message as opposed to a wall post. If it was risque enough, it’ll end up on at least a few other sites, and will pretty much stick around forever.
But does that mean that things are getting “worse”? That the rise of online sharing means that old values like privacy and decency are heading out the window? Maybe they are, but I propose that it’s not a change for the worse. We’ll have to weather many more horror stories and ruined lives before things get better, but they inevitably will.
To grow up in a world where every choice (pretty much from the word go) has life-long ramifications, the understanding of that, coupled with a handful of cautionary tales, might just serve to produce better members of society. If you can’t get away with something you know you shouldn’t be doing, it’s far less likely that you’ll do it.
And, in time, the “reckless sharers” of today will become the managers, employers, teachers and engineers of tomorrow, and the rules will change yet again. Society is the aggregate of its individuals, and we’re creating an entirely new society with the internet. And with that, come new rules, new expectations, new definitions of right and wrong — in short, a new morality.
Wogan May is a web developer, blogger and general internet-genius/obsessive hailing from sunny Strand, South Africa
http://twitter.com/woganmay
