The New LOL: Living Out Loud
A couple years ago, an honor student at a conservative private college in Kentucky decided to do what a growing number of students are doing these days: use his Facebook account to come out of the closet and tell others he is gay.
For his openness, he was expelled from this college which had a policy of not accepting gay students.
Radio Commentator Walter Winchell, shown here in 1947, was known for his high-volume pronouncements about everything and anything. Many young people are becoming known for the same thing online, opting for telling all instead of privacy. (AP Photo)
At another university, a sophomore posted pictures of himself getting plastered at a weekend party. That would have been okay had it not been for the fact he was under the legal drinking age in Ohio and the school did not allow students to hold leadership positions on campus if they were drinking illegally.
He never became editor.
Examples abound
These are just two of many examples of young people who have chosen to live their lives out loud. Throwing caution to the wind, the typical 20-something who has grown up in the age of chatrooms and interactive media has embraced social media sites like Facebook to disclose just about everything they think is either shocking, amusing, or titillating about himself or herself.
And this phenomenon starts early, as the tragic cases of teen suicide over the practice of “sexting” have shown the past couple of years.
I began discovering this lack of concern about privacy a few years ago and have been asking my own college students about it ever since. Originally I asked it in the context of a class I teach on communication ethics. We deal with a section on individual privacy vs. government surveillance, which is a topic that I find somewhat scary because I’ve always wondered how widespread the misuse of government surveillance might be on Americans.
Too many blank stares
Citing some examples of such abuse, I ask my students if they aren’t a bit concerned, too. In return, I usually get silence and some blank stares. So I’m thinking that these are the same students who are willingly giving up their own privacy by self-disclosing about themselves to virtual strangers online, so why should they feel concerned about someone else invading their privacy? And apparently that is true. They aren’t.
So then I ask them if they aren’t concerned about disclosing too much information about themselves in Facebook. Again, a lot of blank stares and silence. I infer from this reaction that either they haven’t ever thought about this as a problem, or they think I’m out of a prehistoric generation that keeps too many secrets about themselves.
A University of Missouri student looks through Facebook while in class. A new research study at Cal-Berklely shows 20-somethings are starting to get more concerned about their loss of privacy on social networking sites like this. (AP Photo/L.G. Patterson)
A third possibility is that they trust the privacy filters on Facebook as much as they seem to trust faceless government officials who controls the means to surveillance.
Who’s to blame
When I tell them about what happened to the Kentucky student or the kid at the Ohio university, they seem shocked. They usually get on the case of the administrations at these two schools, debating their policies they think got the students into trouble. I remind them, however, it was the students, who knew these policies, who got themselves into trouble by living their lives out loud.
Because of these encounters with my own students, I was surprised to see a story in the New York Times recently that revealed the results of a survey done by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley showing this thinking may be shifting among young people.
The study, funded by the Pew Internet Project, found that over half of these young adults surveyed are now more worried about their own privacy they were in 2005. That figures is about equal of the number of people their parents’ age or older who are concerned about their privacy.
Digitial reputations
Just as surprising is people in their 20s are taking more control over their “digital reputations” than are their older counterparts. They delete threatening posts and are starting to limit information about themselves. This finding could, however, be the result of younger people knowing how to engage those digital filters more than older adults who spend less time with the social media.
Possibly because many Facebook users are finding the built-in filters aren’t foolproof, many young people are all of a sudden worried about those party pix or those tell-all announcements of their sexual orientation.
Young people are also hearing, from older people like me, about how college administrators and employers are tracking Facebook and MySpace to find out more information about individuals applying for leadership posts in college or jobs beyond graduation. So that’s starting to give them pause.
Learning to distrust filters
The Times article, written by Laura M. Holson, talks about Sam Jackson, a junior at Yale who began a blog when he was 15 and who has already interned at Google. Jackson said he had learned not to trust any social network to keep his information private.
“If I go back and look, there are things four years ago I would not say today,” he told the Times. “I am much more self-censoring. I’ll try to be honest and forthright, but I am conscious now who I am talking to.”
Says Holson, “He has learned to live out loud mostly by trial and error and has come up with his own theory: concentric layers of sharing. His Facebook account, which he has had since 2005, is strictly personal. “
“I don’t want people to know what my movie rentals are,” Jackson said. “If I am sharing something, I want to know what’s being shared with others.”
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Comments
This blog post made me think about the differences of privacy on Facebook now versus privacy, or lack thereof, when I first opened my Facebook account in 2005. It has only been recently that I notice certain information on most people’s pages being blocked from public/non-friend view. I am one of those people that have tightened up security on my own page. This is mostly due to the talk about current and prospective employers reviewing personal pages for their benefit, not to mention stalkers. I certainly have an internal filter that gets used before I post a message. I don’t want to look stupid or share information that is TOO personal. So I guess what I am trying to say is that I am not living AS loudly as I used to, and I notice this trend with others as well. Social networking is great, but certainly not worth my career, reputation or safety.
The title of the post truly says it all. With the new era of social networking, users are feeling a sense of “liberation.” Many are embracing this false sense of privacy through networks like Facebook and Twitter. As a teacher, I remember how I found that many students would try to add me. I created a limited profile option that I added them to, which only allowed them to see certain aspects of my Facebook account. Since Facebook has this newsfeed to keep users updated on their friends I was able to see students profile and status updates. I was amazed at what they would post and upload! I could not understand how they felt comfortable to add their professor and continue to post personal and demeaning messages and pictures of themselves. Newer generations, in many cases, are taking the “Living Out Loud” ideology too far.
On the other hand, I find that my generation, Gen Y, is very skeptical in what we release. Like Dr. Jim stated, more and more universities and employers reference social networking sites with regards to the candidates they accept. I have seen friends of mine through caution to the wind and expel personal or ignorant dogma and have paid for it. I also feel that Generation Y has grown up with a Big Brother mentality, meaning we were taught that someone is always watching us. Therefore, we approach social networking sites with that same mentality. I get this viewpoint not only from my personal beliefs but from my peers as well. I have been in countless discussions about the true privacy level of the Internet as well as the level of personal discretion we have due to government surveillance, especially after September 11, 2001. It is more evident now that ever that it is just as important to uphold your virtual reputation, as it is to uphold your physical reputation.
Overall, me personally, I never truly lived out loud in an extreme manner. Of course I have had those statuses where I vent but I have always been cautious in my social networking activity. The Internet has turned the world into an immediate global village. With that in mind, I approached the era of Facebook and Twitter with the viewpoint that “It’s easier for society to really look at me now.”
I wanted to address this blog because to me it goes directly to the privacy of individuals and how we recognize what should be kept private and what is okay to share. I believe it is a direct result of the media that causes us to be lax about our private thoughts. It seems like it may be a taste of the celebrity life to be able to share about ourselves and have so many pay attention. Or we think they pay attention.
This is not the first time though that I have read thoughts on those posting their business on line and losing something for it… jobs, scholarships or more recently freedom. I am thinking of the student who posted his friends sexual experience, a very private experience, publically and the victim ended up committing suicide. I felt very saddened for all parties involved. I felt sad that the victim could not survive being ‘outed’. I think these teens could have learned something by reading Oliver Sipple’s story. It may have prevented them from being so careless. I also feel sorry for the teens who posted the video. I am sure they did not stop to realize how far reaching their actions would be. It seems that they have been made so numb by media that they did not see the harm. They could not have imagined the consequences. I am sure as they sit wondering about their future now, they may have learned that things are not always as they are in the news.
We expect others to have respect of our privacy, but some of us don’t respect our own privacy. How can we expect someone to have respect for us if we don’t?
This is a thing that bothers me about social media. People really don’t have to know every little detail about us and what we are doing at any given time. People that use Twitter and Facebook for these reasons really bother me. I have a Facebook and Twitter, but you will never get every detail about my life on there. I like to keep private.
The media may be to blame. Some people feel it is ok to give information about everything. We see the media giving some many details about some people’s and celebrities private lives all the time. We want to be like what we see on TV. But if we continue to give out information about ourselves so freely, then the media will continue to do it as well.
This is an interesting point of view as oftentimes we see stories about people whose privacy has been compromised as a result of an outside entity (i.e. media). In this case, it raises the question of how much is too much information to provide about one’s self.
With the evolution of the pervasiveness of social media, even HR professionals at companies search the internet looking for content on job candidates. Most of the information available to them are what we, the potential candidates, put out there. While there are some public records that we do not personally publish (example: bankruptcy), the large part of what is out there is what we choose to share with the world.
I think it is wise to live by the rule If it not something you would say on national tv, in front of your mother or to your boss you probably should not be posting it. Now more than ever jobs are asking graduates for their social networking accounts, and by posting vulgar or inappropriat things on facebook or twitter is not going to make them want to hire you. A lot of people do not think of that when posting things online. There is a difference between living out loudly and living out smartly. You can still showcase who you are as a person, but you just need to be careful what is being said or shown.
It is amazing how much personal information people are willing to let loose on social media, but what is more shocking how this information can come back to haunt someone. With everything from potential employers and even future in-laws checking Facebook pages, it gives one pause to think before they hit the post button. Would social have done Joseph McCarthy’s job for him and could Twitter have made it easier to round up Asians during WWII?
Every day we are our own “personal marketing manager” as we interact face-to-face and online.
It’s very true that many people have been burned by incriminating photos or by comments they made on Facebook, MySpace, or blog sites.
Is it fair for someone to lose out on a job because of something posted online or is it simply a gross invasion of privacy?
I fall to a “tough love” stance when it comes to online personal marketing. I feel each person is responsible for what they put online and ultimately their own reputation. If they are denied a job because of an inappropriate photo that they post (or allowed to be taken), it’s mostly their own fault (with some exceptions – including others posting photos of them without their consent).
Facebook privacy settings help but are not a guarantee of online privacy. Consider the junior high student passing a nasty note about the teacher to their friend on the opposite side of the classroom. As soon as the student hands the folded message to another student they are giving up their ability to control that message.
It may be unethical (invasion of privacy) for another student (or perhaps even the teacher) to intercept and read the letter before it reaches its destination. Even then, I blame the student who wrote it down. If you don’t want a message to fall into the wrong hands – don’t write it down and trust others with your reputation. The same is true with photos and online messages. We must make decisions assuming people other than the intended receiver might be able to read it.
There are some definite exceptions to this idea. ESPN Reporter Erin Andrews was humiliated after a video of her naked in her hotel room was posted on the Internet. She had no idea this video was being taken, let alone posted on the web. Clearly, this is more than just an invasion of privacy; it breaks several laws as well. This is not Andrew’s fault.
Still, I believe most cases are not like Andrew’s. In our video-crazed world we are like the student writing down a message to pass across the classroom to our friend. The minute we allow a video or photo to be taken of us in an incriminating situation, we can no longer guarantee it will be kept private. It’s simply too easy for others to post or e-mail to others.