I recently had a conversation at a party with a woman who was
introduced to me by a mutual friend. We had what I thought was a candid
conversation about our lives. That night, almost absentmindedly, I found myself
googling her. A simple search turned into an hour-long, slightly uncomfortable
tour of her life, during which I learned all sorts of information that she had
represented quite differently in person.
When I finally closed my computer, I felt a little sick, both
from having more information than I wanted about someone else and from my own,
slightly guilty sense of having snooped where I didn't belong. It all made me
wonder what privacy online really means.
In reading the responses to my earlier
post, I found that many of you are wondering the same thing. How much online
privacy should we give our children? Should we feel guilty for
"spying" on their online activities? After all, what they do on the Internet
is open to the world. What kind of information is appropriate to put online and
what should be off-limits?
The difference of opinion between
parents and kids who have posted is striking. Adults tend to worry that kids
and teens will be hurt in some way by the information they make public online;
younger people often claim that there are benefits to making their personal
lives available to a wider audience.
One post in particular really struck me. A reader named David
wrote about his 15-year-old son, who David had thought of, until recently, as
responsible and mature enough to have some privacy online. But when David
decided to do a bit of snooping around his son's computer, he discovered that
his son's profile in the online game World of Warcraft included a link to a
hardcore porn Web site, among other things.
I was especially struck by this statement in David's post:
The
loss of the youthful innocence of your beloved son seems so much more eerie and
weird when it's exposed or revealed to the masses on the Internet. This is not
a "found" under the bed Playboy or Penthouse; this is a screaming
shot around the world that exposes my son to any and all who wish to take note
(italics mine).
Reading David's post made me wonder, is he really better off
having discovered this information about his son? How much of David's
discomfort comes from the fact that he discovered information that was meant to
be public -- albeit for someone else's consumption, not his? In fact,
later in his post he writes, "What the hell had I done? I felt so
disappointed in my son, but also myself for ever having pursued this web
search."
I think all of us can relate to David's sense of unease about
having done a little too much snooping online: checking out our kids' or
spouse's history online, or googling an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, or spending
more time than we intended reading a stranger's confessional posts on a social
networking site. It's a strange feeling, because the transparency of the
Internet suggests that it's okay to read anything about anyone online. And yet
perhaps this discomfort we feel is a sign that we know that's not true.
Perhaps instead of the strict polarization of "private
vs. public," we should be thinking about different levels of privacy
online. In fact, most things posted online for "public" consumption
are in fact meant for a specific audience, even if it's an audience of
strangers. Most kids who post personal thoughts on social networking sites do
not expect their parents or teachers to see those. When David posted very
sensitive information about his son here, he probably did so knowing that his
son and his son's peers would be unlikely to see it. As researcher danah boyd
told us in an interview: "Privacy is about control of audience" (italics
mine).
I'm interested in knowing what information -- wanted and
unwanted -- you have discovered about other people online. Have any of you ever
found out something about someone else online that has really affected you?
Have you ever posted anything and been made aware of someone else having seen
it who you didn't expect to read it? What was your reaction to that?
