According to CNN.com, “Thanks to the ubiquity of photo-sharing websites like Facebook, 82 percent of children in 10 Western countries have a digital footprint before the age of 2, according to a study by internet security firm AVG.” It’s no surprise that America led the pack, with 92 percent.
Apparent concern around this figure was not over attracting pedophiles, but rather the kids’ credit ratings, due to information like middle name, birth date and mother’s maiden name often shared — and not always by the parents. “Obviously there’s a privacy issue,” said AVG spokeswoman Siobhan MacDermott, “if they’re applying for credit [later on] and having that information readily available for people who want to compromise their identities.”
Absolutely, that’s an issue. Personally, I’m more concerned and curious about the effect of growing up in a fishbowl from day one. We know adults in particular are freaked out about privacy concerns, though often in contradictory ways, as Eric recently wrote about. And teens and pre-teens who have grown up with the internet and social networking are under social pressures the rest of us have never known, at a time in their lives when school social life and peer pressure often feel like they have a ‘do or die’ intensity — and tragically, sometimes do.
So will these toddlers actually have an easier time of it as they grow, since they will have known nothing else? Or have we just sentenced our newest generations to exponentially tougher psychological and self-esteem issues, ripe for the picking by big pharma? Each wave of parents throughout history has unique challenges to navigate when it comes to child-rearing; in that sense, this is nothing new. Hopefully we’ll catch up to the cyber-privacy learning curve soon enough to provide these Facebook babies the tools they need as they enter a world we barely comprehend ourselves.
homogenization has been anti-health since inception/discovery.
“The world is now one giant institution” – De Witte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism
The huge question at issue here involves conscious awareness. New Age approaches to awareness have tended, through time, to reify the idea within those who are receptive – there is often little practical understanding of the psychological mechanics, however. In actuality of course, awareness is merely a *degree* of attention. This attention can be underpinned by a *degree* of concentration – and this is where the ‘problem’ lies with awareness categories. If I concentrate my awareness too much, I will become LESS aware of other things.
Now imagine the whole world’s population, simultaneously staring at one huge TV. Awareness is a collective cultural problem, not simply a problem of psychology.
If enough people voluntarily choose to be hypnotized by the same small array of ‘reality’ constructs then these will be replicated along very narrow lines and reduce ‘reality’ to porridge.
Because there is an exponential magnification going on, (with technological unification of consciousness being the driver) we need to understand the question of the interface(s), with a greater degree of sophistication. What are the protective or mitigating factors – the preventatives?
The relationship between the individual and unifying consciousness structures has never been more direct and unitary. There has to be a middle way.
For me, this has to involve a set of actions around creating, sustaining and developing local cultures – cultures that are defined in ways that differ from the unifying norm. This will involve activists generating new meanings categories through the development of a thorough culture of the neighborhood – where people can manifest agency and feel their own capacity to help shape a shared ‘reality’, one that is sustainable and sustaining.
In my view, the locality is something we should ALL be giving some considerable attention to…
Except Len, this is the very tunnel vision that we need to get away from. The credit card companies can drop the mother’s maiden name from its list of security questions. In fact, did it ever make any sense to think the mother’s maiden name was secure? I process employee paperwork and in this modern world we live in, the wife often keeps her maiden name and I’ve even seen childrens names hyphenated with both the father’s and mother’s names on the parents health benefits papers and beneficiary forms. Women finally get to have an identity in the real world and on facebook too. People at CNN are not as brilliant as they like to think, yet they will scare the crap out of people just for kicks, if not more ad money.
Thank you, Amanda. Once again you are the (planet) wave front. This goes beyond the word “issue”. Human beings’ way of being is changing fundamentally and quickly. You point about the situation being exploited by “big pharma” is very well taken. Your visionary ways are an asset to Planet Waves.