Baron, Ch. 10: A Space of One's Own

The idea of the Internet becoming a space to use as one wishes is a lesson I had to learn young. I, like many other 12-15 year olds, had a Xanga in middle school, which was really my first experience with an online blog or ediary. I didn't tell my parents about it and of course they found it and read EVERY single post. Including ones in which I lamented being grounded or "my stupid parents" or something equally as juvenile. The conversation quickly turned into the implications of my use of these sites (MySpace was just starting, Facebook was for college students with .edu emails only at this point) and whether or not my computer should be loaded with parental guidance software, which of course I found very offensive and a complete invasion of privacy.

Now that I'm older, however, I notice that kids start logging on much younger than I did and they begin posting on these sites in ways that could potentially be dangerous. I have two female cousins, 15 and 10, who are online every day. My aunt knows their passwords and it's required that they remain friends with several adults in the family so that they can have someone keeping an eye on them, which is pretty important. It removes the temptation to think of these sites and the content we post on them as any kind of private, because they just aren't, and that's a hard lesson to learn, especially when you're young.

I think our social media encyclopedia collection has the potential to illuminate some of these issues for new internet users because if one looks carefully through the fine print on some of these sites it defines the rules for which we have to operate, which is important.