When I was in the 10th grade, I made my very own MySpace page. It was my social networking debut. Prior, I had only digitally interacted with friends via AIM and the occasional AOL chatroom (until some creepy old man would inevitably pose "a/s/l?"). Ew.
As my 15 year-old self signed up and meticulously crafted my MySpace profile to reflect exactly who I was (Counting Crows' "Big Yellow Taxi" on autoplay, background picture a soccer net), I hadn't the slightest inclination that I was entering a world from which I could never return.
Social networks have become one of the most pervasive forces in modernity. Some argue (and are mostly right) that with the advent of social networks and more broadly, the Internet, privacy is dead. Unless you don't exist online. Which are very few of us.
For we living, breathing, consenting adults (over the age of 13) able to make the decision for ourselves to exist online and choose to do so, more power to us. Hopefully most of us have sound enough judgement to decide what should and should not be published about ourselves to just about anyone in the world who wants to see it. I say "most of us" because there are plenty of people out there like this. And this. But I digress.
For we living, breathing, consenting adults. I carefully chose this wording for the consideration of two groups of people I've lately noticed have unique existences on social networks, Facebook especially: Kids and the dead.
We'll start with kids. There are four major developments in Facebook's product timeline that have encouraged the explosion of kids showing up in your newsfeed: The addition of the newsfeed itself (2006), the photos feature (2005), the LIKE button (2009) and the platform going mobile (2011). Since the beginning of time, parents have loved bragging about their kids. Since the beginning of photography, parents have loved taking photos of their kids. Combine the two in a seamless, 3-second process on your smartphone, then add the ability for people to publicly praise their kids and boom--they're all over Facebook. It's just an extremely convenient, public baby book.
But what future repercussions do kids face for an online identity begun before they had any say about it? Those naked toddler photos or stories about how they pooped in their hands and smeared it on the TV? We have no idea. It's so new, there's no way to tell what kind of social and psychological consequences having an online identity that early in life will have on someone as they age. After all, Facebook has only been available to the general public since 2006. Even the very first "Facebook Kids" are not yet 10 years old. We'll have to wait and find out.
Then there's the dead. Sadly, I've known several young people taken far before their time, most of them since I've been in college, and have had a Facebook page. The majority of these souls have lived on through their Facebook pages--for whatever reason, no one has deleted their profiles.
I've noticed for much of the living, the dead still existing in their digital social circles has provided them comfort; if they're still online, they're not completely gone. Perhaps in all of us, there's a subconscious, irrational belief that there's Facebook in the afterlife, and our late friends are still checking their notifications. The dead's Facebook pages now serve as digital memorials, a place for people to visit, continue posting photos, write memories and messages on their walls. And unlike a gravestone or ash site, you can take it with you wherever you may be. It's an ongoing homage to someone's memory and avenue to continue talking to them.
Kids, and the dead, on social networks. What do you think?
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