A personal network of prying eyes

Having the advantage of growing up with technological change and software updates faster than any other age group, Generation Y is at the frontier of social media.

As a fellow Gen-Y, it comes as no shock that most of my interaction is based online, as all of my friends seemingly live online. Gossip no longer takes form in the halls of university or high school – it only takes a quick page refresh on Facebook to realise that she is no longer with him because she’s posting depressing lyrics again or those two girls aren’t talking anymore because one of them deleted the other from her page.

Then there are those people I don’t really associate with but keep them on my friends list for whenever I feel like ‘checking up’ on their page. 447 photos? Don’t mind if I do…

And I can’t forget the inundated requests from my own parents to join Farmville or help build a gang on Mafia Wars. Even such subjects manage to make it to dinner table conversation.

I can even go to the extent of getting friends’ tweets sent to my phone, but hearing so-and-so cannot sleep at 3:41am and my own brother is getting ready to shower at 6am is not desirable.

In this day and age, it seems our lives and our friendships are documented by social networking.

If you look at any Facebook page, a personal history of that individual starts to unravel through conversations with other people, interests, check-ins, status updates and tagged photos. You’re more likely to find out more about that person in the time it takes to scroll down their page, than you are if you read their bio. It’s ironic to think in such a heavily surveillanced era, we freely give information out to anyone who will listen.

Indeed, the nature of communication is in constant flux with new technology and wider access to a variety of social networking sites. Everyone is connected and information travels faster than we think.  Too easily we find ourselves over-stepping the line of ‘too much information’ for the prying eyes of our personal networks.

So for fellow Facebookers out there, please follow the golden rule of Facebook: don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t tell your own mother.