I think that it all started for me when I was a freshman in college. I had used various posting and messaging sites in the past such as Xanga, Myspace, and AIM, but none of these would compare to Facebook. I jumped on the Facebook bandwagon during the initial stages, when all you could have was a picture and a brief description of yourself. Now, Facebook has exploded into cultural phenomenon that touches most of our lives.
Some people use it as a networking and information tool, with others use it to put their social exploits on display for all to see. Many people have very outspoken opinions that they place upon Facebook or Twitter. My question is whether or not we will have leaders in the future that can have a clean slate when we live in a technological world that makes our viewpoints so transparent. Our First Amendment Rights and the heightened sense of security that we feel in front of a computer make it very easy to make a lot of social judgements that may come back to haunt us at a later point. I feel that we have all come a long way in realizing that what we display on the internet will possibly be with us forever, but our freedom of speech may get the best of us.
This will be a very interesting change in politics to examine over the next several decades. Right now, most candidates do not have any dirty laundry or incriminating pictures of themselves from a Facebook profile they created in college. However, within a generation, new political candidates will most likely have such a record of their internet lives available to the public. It seems to me a shame that an incriminating picture taken of a person in college could block their possible success as a representative of their constituents. I feel there are two possible ways this can go. First, either everyone continues to have a fairly open presence on the internet, and eventually the public ignores any sensational reporting regarding that internet presence, or, secondly, within a generation, everyone is taught to post little online. Frankly, I hope it is the former.
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