When I see kids growing up online today it makes me glad I never had to do that. By the time social media was a thing, I was a grown-ass adult. Maybe I didn’t always act like it, but I knew enough that what was done here would be done forever – that you didn’t ever erase something that was online, so I made the decision to live as openly and freely on here as I would in my real life existence. In other words, it had to pass the mother/husband/best friend test: if it was fine for my Mom, Andy and Suzie to see, then it was ok to put up here. Thankfully, none of those people nor myself have been particularly prudish, and nothing I put up here has been disrespectful or rude unless someone really deserved it. (Hello Pier 1 Imports.)
As I get even older, I stand by just about everything that I’ve posted here. I may cringe at former righteousness or shirk off some shameless show-offiness, but for the most part I have no regrets. I can say that at this age. When I was fourteen years old, I couldn’t have done as well, so I’m thankful the internet wasn’t born before I was. A head-start makes a world of difference, and I needed it to get ahead of the trauma and drama that today’s social-media-saturated world can inflict.
When I see a teenager with a YouTube channel and millions of followers, I worry that they didn’t ever know what it was like to develop without being watched in some way, to grow and flourish and become who you were meant to be without the influence of perception on such a large scale. What does an absence of privacy and a chance to be completely alone and isolated do to a person? The next generation is about to find out, and everything I see happening in our world seems to be tipping toward a major shit-show. Part of me is glad I’ll be dead when all of it comes to fruition. And maybe somewhere these words will live on as a wish and a warning.
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