Teeswater News – Online!

Sharing Your Life…

By: PropellerHed (July 12, 2010)

It's a big deal these days – social networking.

The way of the Internet has changed radically since the early 90's when dialup was the rule and even downloading email took 'two cups of coffee and a trip to the loo' . But from the very beginning one mantra has been constant on the net – Stay Safe!

When our kids first log onto the net we are concerned about where they are going and what they are doing, making sure they understand NEVER to give out their names, addresses, phone numbers etc. For ourselves it is all about using private browsing and 'clear the cookies!' whenever we bank or shop online.

Now comes a study from the Pew Research Center indicating that young people value sharing over privacy protection. In fact, two-thirds of 895 technology experts and stakeholders, surveyed for the study about the future of the internet, believe the millennial generation, born mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, will make online sharing a lifelong habit!

"There were voices saying privacy is going to appear quaint, it's completely changed, maybe privacy doesn't exist anymore," said Janna Anderson, an associate professor at Elon University School of Communications who led the study.

Does that mean that our youngsters, having grown up in an Internet world, have a false sense of security, or is it that they really don't care about their own personal privacy? Or is that more and more we are relying on third parties to ensure our safety?

Although 67 per cent of those surveyed online agreed that by 2020, millennials will continue to disclose a great deal of information in order to stay connected, 29 per cent thought they will  "grow out" of much of their use of social networks, multiplayer online gaming, and other online social tools.

A few weeks ago my sister and I used Facebook as a way to pass coordinating messages back and forth (she and her husband were touring southwestern Ontario). At one juncture we planned a meetup involving travelling over an hour each. We coordinated the place and date and in one last message my sister asked for confirmation of time. I replied almost immediately.

The next day we drove to Elmira and waiting in a seriously hot parking lot for over an hour. Nothing! Finally, somewhat disgruntled, we drove home. It turns out that my sister hadn't received my answer, had waited and then assumed that something had come up and we were not going to be able to make the meetup.

The actual problem was not us, but rather Facebook! It turns out that my sister is VERY popular and somewhere in the 3500 plus 'friends' on her list my message got lost. Granted she is at the high end of the spectrum (Teeswater.Ca has less than 200 friends which is quite a reasonable number) but even though both of us are 'net-savvy' we relied on a third party to ensure our personal safety.

A bit of a wakeup call for sure. Maybe it is time we all started talking to each other directly – rather than posting on a Facebook wall…

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Sources: CBCNews, Pew Research Center, Imagining the Internet

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Our resident code jockey is the person responsible for the look / feel / nifty new applications on Teeswater.Ca. Mathan has been a computer nut (one step beyond fanatic) since he built his first analog computer out of bits of wire and spare parts back in 1973 ( Think of Charles Babbage’s Thinking Machine). Since 1976 he has worked on / tinkered with / programmed just about every kind of computer from laptops to mainframes. In 1991 he caught the Internet bug, first running his own 2 line bulletin board system then expanding into Web applications and development, winning numerous industry awards along the way. Currently he can be found in a dark corner of the kitchen muttering about how Windows® is ruining the world and waxing poetic about Linux Mint.

Filed Under: Technology
Tags: Internet, Janna Anderson, online, Pew Research Center