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I guess I get to feel old and snarky today. So be it. I just shake my head when I read articles about people who value ‘sharing’ over ‘privacy’ when it comes to net usage. My cynical weasel whiskers get all twitchy when I read about the sheer awesomeness of social networking. I’ll explain why as we look at the article.

“Two-thirds of 895 technology experts and stakeholders surveyed about the future of the internet believe the millennial generation, born mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, will make online sharing a lifelong habit, suggests a Pew Research Center and Elon University study released Friday.”

Oh fantastic! The generation ahead of me feels all entitled and special enough to think that people actually care about what happens in their pathetically small, atomized existences. I would propose the only time people actually notice your ‘meaningful socially networked discourse’ is when you say something stupid or inappropriate.

Facebooking about the puerile experiences of your life and having them remain on the web for roughly forever just does not seem like a wise decision to me.  Mistakes are learning opportunities, but exist only on facebook for the amusement of others.   On the other hand facebook does serve a somewhat Darwinistic purpose; that of weeding out extra stupid people who get caught for making threats or cyberbullying while on FB or Twitter.  I mean really? Posting threats to someone on your own FB page?  You may as well begin playing in traffic right now.

“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. At least one respondent wrote that publicness is becoming a public good. “And keeping information to yourself is going to be seen as antisocial.… There were a lot of people saying sharing is the new normal.”

“Sharing is the new normal”, indeed!  The intense need for self-gratification seems to be winning out on any sort of rational view of this phenomena.   Instead of actually doing something worthwhile you get your needs for acceptance filled by the number of facebook ‘friends’ you have?

“Young people enjoy the feeling of being connected and feel sharing benefits their personal lives, Anderson added. “They understand that there are negatives, but they believe that the upside is dominant.”

Young people are also stupid.  They lack the experience and discipline needed to make rational decisions about relatively simple life decisions, nevermind the complexities of social sharing on the Internet.

Have the techno-youth really considered why it is so darn easy to get up and running in the various social networking sites?  Why is that?  Social networking is the advertisers wet dream.  You have peoples private information and various applications and ‘fun surveys’ that collect information about an individuals likes and dislikes.  By social networking you are essentially doing the leg work for advertisers as you data-mine yourself for free, plus you have no control over who gets to see your information once its out there.  In Canada this has been addressed to a limited extent by the Privacy Commissioner, but I guarantee that the practice is still rampant.  How else do you pay for the servers and the bandwidth to keep the FB servers operational?

“Many of those surveyed said new social norms are emerging that reward disclosure among young people, said Lee Rainie, director of the Internet & American Life Project, in a statement.

“Some experts also expressed hope that society will be more forgiving of those whose youthful mistakes are on display in social media such as Facebook picture albums or YouTube videos,” he added.”

Is that not a nice hope?  ‘Society will be more forgiving of youthful mistakes…’.  That is certainly not the case if you wish to run for public office.  So naive experts whinge for a more naive society.  Perfect.  Anything (anything) you put on the web is fair game.  Assume your scribblings will be used against you in the worst possible light devoid of context, to smear and sully your reputation or job application or whatever as IPIP (important people in power) will google you to see if you have indeed made an asshat of yourself on the Internet.