Born Wired

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n early 2008 PBS aired “Growing Up Online”— a Frontline investigation into the often invisible and potentially perilous Internet lives of the so-called “Digital Natives.” The program examined several pressing issues surrounding the first generation to grow up plugged-in. I want to focus on the dangers related to teens socializing online and the generational struggle that it fuels.

For young people born wired, the Internet offers a seductive sense of freedom and provides a much needed space for creativity and personal connection—in other words, the web is a “living” link to friends (and others) and it is an outlet for self-expression. For many parents, however, social networking challenges the received sanctity of privacy and discretion. These parents fear the various ramifications of leading private lives publicly online. For example, concerned caretakers point to the risks related to revealing oneself to a far-reaching and largely unknown virtual audience. This entry looks at the stories of Jess, a shy girl better known by her provocative online avatar “Autumn Edows,” and Davina, a high-school student whose war of words with a classmate—waged over MySpace—culminated in a very real lunchroom brawl that, when broadcasted on YouTube, regrettably earned her Internet infamy.

Jessica Hunter was an insecure girl who had trouble fitting in at school. As a result, she suffered years of humiliation and ridicule. “I didn’t want to be Jess,” she told Frontline producers, “because all it did was remind me of the girl who had no friends…I wanted to be the complete opposite.” For Jess, the Internet provided the opportunity to transform. At just 14-years-old, she created her online alter ego “Autumn Edows.” Autumn—a Goth artist and model known, among other things, for posting sexually suggestive material considered beyond Jess’s years—quickly cultivated an extensive Internet following. And Jess basked in her newfound fame. But Jess’s double-life crashed when her parents “discovered” Autumn and forced her to delete the simulated stand-in. “It was a lesson she had to learn,” said Jess’s father, “The lesson being…you have to be very careful about where this information goes and how people perceive [it].” This kind of online identity play begs several questions that draw out the generational fissures attached to coming of age online: Are virtual selves creative or destructive? Was the real Jess reborn or erased? For her parents, Jess “disappeared” when she first became Autumn. But for Jess, socializing online made her visible. On the one hand, parents’ fears of social networking are well founded. In the words of one anxious mid-lifer, “If it’s on the net, it’s open to anyone…there are no safeguards.” On the other hand, for kids like Jess, new media offers indispensible social ties. To his credit, Jess’s father eventually recognized the value of his daughter’s Internet identity. “She found a world she could live in,” he told Frontline.

Another risk associated with teenagers’ now ubiquitous use of social networking sites was spotlighted by Davina’s story. Thanks to a video posted on YouTube, Davina’s involvement in a lunchroom fight was immortalized online. As a result, Davina told Frontline she worried that college admissions officers might see the video and subsequently reject her application. Corrina di Gennaro and Miriam Simun discuss this legitimate fear in an entry on the Digital Natives blog: “While kids socialize in online spaces they often feel are out of the realm of adults, college admission officers and prospective employers are trolling sites like MySpace and Facebook, searching for evidence of illegal or unsavory hijinks to deny offers of admission or employment.”

Internet buzzwords like “the Cloud” attach a certain transient quality to online activity that belies the web’s unbending permanence. Davina’s story brings attention to this reality. For impulsive teens, an everlasting record of ill-conceived behavior, comments, etc. is a major peril of publishing private lives online.

While social networking has fast become a youth-dominated domain, the digital world is not all casual chats and emails exchanged among teens. As I discuss in my next entry, the 2008 Obama campaign’s deployment of new media to raise funds and rally supporters represented a radical new use of social networking tools: fueling a political movement.