9/9/13 Social media

Social media has had a huge impact on my generation. It began for me with AIM in middle school. It allowed me to connect with all of my classmates and family on a whole new level, being a very social person- I connected to this immediately. I began to develop a network of people that I could contact at nearly a moments notice for all sorts of purposes.  
The next phase was Myspace. This changed the way I looked at the internet. Not only was it a place to communicate, it became a place to show people what happened in my life and to express my teenage emotions. This was good and bad for my generation. It was like the internet 2.0 for social media. Suddenly it wasn't just communication anymore, everything was two way and public. Good in the fact that we could now connect to peers on a whole new level. Bad for our futures.
Facebook came next and is still the current winner in my book. I connect to old friends, chat, and procrastinate with this tool.  I have had entire classes held using almost only Facebook. It is a big part of my life and will continue to be.

But what I really want to talk about is the implications of these tools. Myspace in particular. My generation was told as youngsters "be careful what you put on the internet". This didn't even begin to describe the gravity of the situation. For me- it meant "be careful your parents might catch you cursing or holding a beer can."  NOT "Be careful because anything you post on the internet could follow you forever and possibly ruin many choices and possibilities later in life." Not that I necessarily would have cared at the ripe age of 13- because god knows I was invincible.
Sure there are some embarrassing posts in my past- probably nothing anyone would ever truly care about. But my point is anonymity is dead and the internet is forever. No matter how hard I try to delete this blog post- someone somewhere has the time and resources to recover it. Especially the monster companies like Myspace and Facebook- they store EVERYTHING. Even Siri on my phone stores everything I ask her. Internet searches aren't even anonymous.
I think politics will take the blunt of this. Anyone from the Myspace generation will suddenly have old posts, pictures, and comments popping up all over- possibly ruining their credibility.


Like I said. Remember, and grind it deep into your children's minds-  Anonymity is dead, and the internet is forever.