Grown Up Digital 2: Facebook &c.
The Net Generation is changing the face of the Internet. The Internet, in turn, changes them—the way they think, what they expect from school and work, and how they socialize.
We have been looking at Don Tapscott’s new book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. This time we’ll be exploring chapter two of this thoroughly researched book.
Chapter two opens with the story of Facebook. Tapscott uses Facebook as an example of how the Internet is now a place for people share and collaborate rather than simply a place for people to find information on a topic. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook when he was an undergraduate student. It was the night before his big Art History exam, and he hadn’t studied. He decided then to create a website for the course, with pictures of the art that they were expected to know about. His classmates helped out by filling in the blanks. Everyone posted their comments on the art. The notes were so relevant and helpful that everyone in the class passed the exam with flying colors. So, Tapscott writes, “Net Geners are transforming the Internet from a place where you mainly find information to a place where you share information, collaborate on projects of mutual interest, and create new ways to solve some of our most pressing problems” (pg. 40).
Thus, if Net Gens had to choose between the Internet and television, television loses every time. TV, compared with the Internet, is passive and one way. The Internet is collaborative, interactive, and is ready when and where a person wants it. Consider the mobile phone novel. Each day an author uploads parts of text to a mobile phone novel Web site, and readers download the text to their phones. An author can post a snippet a day. One author in Japan named Rin wrote a novel over a six month stretch while in high school. She gained 20 million readers, and eventually the novel was turned into a 142 page hardcover that was the fifth-best selling novel in Japan in 2007. Imagine that happening in the baby boom generation. An author would have to type up a manuscript and send it out to publishing companies and wait several months for a response. Authors today have instant feedback on their writing with the interactive Web.
Tapscott has one strong warning for the Net Generation. He tells us that we’re giving away our personal information on social networks and elsewhere and in doing so are undermining our future privacy. With this warning I wholeheartedly agree. Revealing personal and private information in public can have a deleterious effect on school applications and job applications. The Net Generation may not think it’s a big deal to share pictures of themselves partying, but it may not look so good to them in the future, and it may not look good to prospective schools and employers.
My French friend, a high school physics teacher in South America, disagrees with me. He says that schools or employers have no right to judge one’s private life. The private and the professional are two different worlds, and one has no bearing on the other. However, I offer him this scenario as a rebuttal. If I am an employer and my choice for a new employee comes down to two people and one of them writes under interests: “Rock and roll all night, and party every day,” and the other person has “reading great works of Literature” under interests, I would choose the latter. Call it unfair. Call it discrimination. It’s reality. You would do the same if you cared about your business. We need to understand the long-term consequences of sharing too much of ourselves online. As we do, we’ll be able to navigate the sundry privacy issues that come along with aplomb.
What do you think about privacy issues? Do you ever feel that you share too much personal information on social networking sites? Is it fair for employers, schools, churches and other organizations to pass judgment on people’s character based on a few photos or comments?
Related posts:
[...] English teachers can assign texting or twittering as creative writing. Don Tapscott tells the story about the Japanese student named Rin who wrote an entire novel via texting. She [...]