Dear Eye Spy,
You're right. This is fast becoming a worrying trend and even Antonella Barba has been in the news for risque photos that have been posted online. In another generation, young people might do crazy things and, other than the odd Polaroid, they would be lost in the ether or committed to memory. Now, it doesn’t take long for compromising images to pop up online.
Why do young people today feel cavalier about such images on MySpace, YouTube or other sites, and whether they might come back to haunt them later in life?
Young people usually have a lack of perspective. It’s the rare teen or young adult who has the maturity to forsee the future and understand how actions today will affect life in the future. That’s why they have parents!
But even with parents, teens and young people have much more freedom and immediacy because of the internet. They’re also more hormonal than lots of other people because teenage years and young adulthood are the times when their bodies are getting lots of hormones, naturally — and sometimes, the hormones make them moody, impulsive and reactive, causing them to do things they might wait on if they were older.
The internet is just one more venue for teens and young adults to express behavior. Only when they act silly or stupid on the internet, it’s a lot different than having a tantrum at a party or acting out at a football game or bar. The only people seeing them act out at a party, football game or bar are those people who happen to be there. Then there’s the gossip machine. But that’s like molasses compared to the speed an internet captured display of questionable behavior can disseminate the episode — whether it’s a sex tape, naked pictures, or images of other behavior that they may regret later.
Photos and negatives are no longer the only trail that can be left — YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and a myriad of other blogs and websites will make today’s bad behavior tomorrow’s national news.
