Growing up in the Web Age

06May09

I joined Facebook recently as part of my exceptionally late plan to get back in touch with the world and, in one night, it’s prompted around 25 emails from one initial friend request which I’m thoroughly enjoying even if it is totally unsustainable! I uploaded a few photos of Caitlyn at which point I had a thought: Caitlyn was born into an era nothing like the one we grew up in. I don’t mean in the obvious sense of progress – of course our toys and games were simpler (lego was much better!), kids TV was cheesier, Calpol was a lot tastier and hardly anything was bad for you. No, I mean with regards to privacy.

I see you!

We’ve grown up in an era of acceleratingly progressive technology and millions upon millions of parents are blogging and of them, I would imagine a significant proportion of them will at some point blog/Facebook/etc to some extent about their children. The level of exposure our children face is unmatched historically as the technology and culture just didn’t exist. We’ve all assumed that because we’re happy to share some of our lives with the world, our children will be equally happy and have taken a privacy decision on their behalf for entire generations. Presumably they will be, after all they’re growing up in that context.

With each year that passes, somebody finds a way to make information easier and therefore more attractive to publish whether it’s a website aggregating blogs, Flickr, Twitter etc into a lifestream or simply a button in an application which automatically uploads photos to Facebook or Bebo. Once it’s shared, that information is out in the cloud and the world can – for better or worse – comment on, take and re-publish that content.

Photos used to be taken on film, developed then either put in an album or put in a box and only a handful of people ever saw them. Now there are cameras and phones which can push images straight up to Flickr without going near a computer. Some contain GPS units to geotag exactly where in the world a particular image was taken. Instead of taking 24-36 shots over a few days or weeks, digital photography promotes taking hundreds of shots without worrying about film or development costs. Then there’s the gigabytes of digital video we’re capturing too…

It’s a lack of time and energy that’s stopped me blogging every day of Caitlyn’s first 2 years. Nearly everyday brings a different memory I want to preserve and share with those I know will appreciate the info. It’s one thing to phone my mum and tell her what Caitlyn did for the first time today but there are so many other people that want that news too and a blog is the simplest way to both disseminate that news and to keep it for posterity. I have a terrible memory unless it concerns films or programming it seems so I’ll certainly benefit from being to look back over our family growing up with Google and WordPress kindly giving me the ability to search my brain.

Sunny Smiles

It’s no secret that once something is on the web, it stays there in some form or other so anything one publishes today is probably going to be around for a long time to come. With that in mind, I’ve been selective about what I would and would not put up in the past, i.e. photos locked in private Apple galleries, but I’m coming round to the idea of putting the content – my family life in other words – out there for those who are interested.

The downside of this could be security implications later in life. How many websites, banking systems, legal documents etc require security checks such as town of birth, first school, first pet name, first car, mother’s maiden name and so on. These tests become obsolete when an entire life is laid out online.

Caitlyn’s Point of View?

I wonder what Caitlyn will actually think when she grows up and sees aspects – potentially many aspects – of her life story on the net. By then, lifestreaming will probably be so commonplace that she’d expect nothing else, perhaps even be disappointed if it wasn’t there. Maybe all her friends’ families will do the same so her and her friends will all know everything there is to know about each other. On the other side of the fence, maybe we’re setting her up with a disadvantage where by the time she has her first boyfriend or her first job interview etc there’s year upon year of bio there. She’s going to be brought up surrounded by technology so I’m backing the former.

It goes without saying that private moments will stay private but it will be interesting to see how this publishing trend evolves over the next decade where it will probably get more prolific if anything.

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Tags: Caitlyn, Parents, Privacy