The ideas surrounding privacy have changed dramatically since the evolution of the Internet. No longer can we rely on our private lives being private, because we choose to put everything out there. With social networking sites, blogs, and email, the definition of privacy is not what it once was. But we are the ones who helped change the definition. Because the Internet is like a free forum for anyone who has anything to say about anything, the environment is one that fosters this kind of open free for all behavior. In the book “The Future of Reputation,” author Daniel Solove cites countless examples of people posting stuff that they wouldn’t say or do in real life on the Internet before thinking twice about it. In most of the cases, something blew up or hurt someone’s reputation because people don’t stop and think before they post. The case of the “dog poop girl” case, a woman on a subway in South Korea, is just one of many examples. The woman’s little dog pooped on the train, and she refused to clean it up when asked by some fellow passengers. Once upon a time, that story might have stayed between the woman and the other subway commuters, but not in today’s digital age. Someone snapped a picture of the woman and her dog with his or her cell camera, and soon that picture was broadcast worldwide on the Internet. Because of the humiliation and embarrassment of being associated with that picture everywhere she went, the woman had to drop out of school.
So, this is the present. But what about the future? Can this kind of environment be long-lasting, and a better question is: should we allow it?
I don’t think so. I think the future of privacy on the Internet needs to be shaped by what we do now to ensure better protection for the world’s population. I think it has to start with education. We need to be teaching the younger generations what responsibility on the Internet means. It’s true that each day brings younger and younger people to activity on the Internet. 7 year olds are blogging, and people even have fan pages for their babies on Facebook. I’m fine with that. I just think we need to be talking about. We need to tell kids, and pre-teens who are active on MySpace and Facebook what privacy settings are and encourage them that there are things in place to protect them, and they should use them.
I also think the idea of anonymity needs to disappear, it’s when people don’t think they have a name associated with something they’ve said or done that they feel they can just say or do anything with any repercussions. If this changed, if people were held responsible for their actions on the Internet, we wouldn’t have as many cases of people slandering someone else, people would learn from the standards that were put in place.
The bottom line is that we can’t keep operating in the way we’re operating in now in regards to privacy. We’ve got to start talking about how to safe guard in the future as the Internet becomes an even more integral part of our daily lives.
