Youth, Digital Trails & Doing Damage Control
Posted by anastasia on 03-10-2010
Last week I was in Chicago speaking to high school freshman and sophomores (as well as separately to parents and counselors) about Totally Wired-related issues. It's interesting to be revisiting these topics three years after the book first came out. What's changed? The class/race divisions that are now determining which teens are primarily on MySpace vs. Facebook (I spoke at a large Catholic school, and when I asked who was on MySpace, I think maybe 5 students raised their hands out of 500). The media hype around Twitter (even less hands went up than for MySpace). Lots more parents on Facebook (some who are friends with their teens and some who just insist on having their passwords). And of course, "sexting" is the new potentially viral and legally treacherous way to share naked pics (which makes sense given how text messaging has exploded with U.S. teens in the past couple of years). The recent moral panic over "sexting" has replaced the initial stranger danger fear that was so rampant a couple of years ago.
Now the big adult concern is over online reputation management and potential permanence of the digital trail teens (and really all of us) are leaving behind. Even as I showed ridiculous examples of what people have posted publicly and emphasized that "nothing is truly private online," I kept thinking that we're all (youth and adults) going to continue to make mistakes that could potentially follow us online. It made me think about a conversation I had with my husband [who is a psychologist] about "harm reduction." An example would be using methadone to treat heroin addicts vs. forcing them to go cold turkey. Or even a needle exchange to reduce the risk of spreading HIV among IV drug users. I know those are extreme examples, but as I was giving my standard shpiel about posting more positive information under your real name (blogging, LinkedIn profile, thoughtful comments, etc.) as a way to potentially push those indiscretions or photos someone else may have posted lower in Google search results, I thought this is — in a way — harm reduction. It just felt like as many times and ways as you could tell teenagers to "think before they post," use privacy settings and beware of what other people might post about you, there is no way to have 100 percent control over your online reputation. Just as the parents who think because they have their teen's password, they have 100 percent control over what their kids are doing online (teens can create alternate profiles…).
Celebrities and politicians have always had to do damage control when something bad got out (and in our 24/7 online news cycle, they certainly have to do a lot more of it). Now we all have to think of managing our online reputations in a similar way. This means being prepared to "live with" potential mistakes or embarrassing images you can't take back. Learning how to apologize or thoughtfully speak to past online blunders in future job interviews. Putting as much good stuff about yourself online as possible to overshadow the bad. Technology is changing our cultural norms. Welcome to the brave new world of growing up "totally wired."
P.S. The image in this post is a Facebook photo posted by former New England Patriots cheerleader Caitlin Davis who was then 18. She was drawing male genitalia and swastikas on her passed out friend. She was fired from the squad as a result.
Categorized under: Totally Wired, Web, Workplace