(Don't) Read All About It

by Marian Klatt

Want to talk about a generation gap? Let's talk about blogs. You have a blog, but does your grandmother? Your blog talks about your life, but how would you feel about your 13-year-old cousin spilling her secrets to the world?

I was with my mother and grandmother one night when the subject of Dr. Phil came up. Mom said, "He had this teenage girl on who had a--what's it called? My space?" I nodded. "She was posting pictures of herself in a bathing suit and everything, and when her mother found out, she wouldn't let her use the Internet anymore. That little snot was trying to tell Dr. Phil how her privacy had been violated, but he wasn't having any of that. He told her the Internet didn't allow for privacy, and how molesters were out there, and how her mother was just trying to keep her safe."

I nodded, and prepared to talk about my blog. Then I noticed my grandmother, and how quiet she was during this whole conversation. The very idea of the Internet is still pretty foreign to her. I tried to teach her how to use a mouse for a word processing program once, and suffice it to say that we didn't get much further than that with new technology education. It occurred to me, in that moment, that she must think the idea of people talking about their private life in this way very, very odd.

It reminded me of a few nights before, when I'd been listening to Love Line, an advice show ostensibly for the younger generation. A star of the comedy The Office was on, and a caller asked if the MySpace account he'd found in her name was really hers. "Oh, yes," she said, "and my Top 10 people are all the actual actors of the show, too." It's so natural now, at least to young folk. Three years ago, I was still getting the question, "What's a blog?" from my peers. Now it's just assumed you have one. Everyone has one, right?

In spite of having had my own blog for almost five years, I think the older generations may be right on this one. Perhaps we have lost some perspective when it comes to the sharing of personal information. When I was first writing online, I would talk about anything that happened in my life: friends who annoyed me, things that went wrong with my family and professors, and details of my daily routine. I figured if someone was interested in stalking me, they would find a way with or without my blog. Besides, I was careful not to be mean or talk about anything I considered truly personal in this public spot.

My daily page hits went up quickly, and I enjoyed being at the top of search engine picks. Not everything went smoothly, though. An ex-friend found a post where I talked about her boyfriend trying to pick me up. A current friend was offended when I wrote what I thought to be a lighthearted piece about friends implying I'd had too much to drink. She had a long talk with me about how if I had a problem with her, I should talk about it directly, and not on my webpage. A creepy middle-aged man started threatening me and calling my professors after I publicly made fun of a pathetic pick-up e-mail he'd sent.

All this, over time, led me to LiveJournal, where I eventually made my posts limited to a private audience. I learned that while I still enjoy blogging, there was something to be said for not airing my personal life to every soul who happened to have a dial-up. That teenager on Dr. Phil probably didn't think twice about putting up a picture of herself with friends at the beach, because what's a fun picture between friends? Blogs seem so close and intimate that they create an illusion of privacy where none exists. Thus, we sometimes don't see the full consequences of our words, or have the foresight to see how other people might interpret them, until it is too late to take them back.

Maybe we should apply a new test to our blogs, and ask ourselves, "How would I feel if my grandmother saw this?" We can call it "The Grandma Test," and save the young folk to follow us a lot of trouble.

The Author

Marian recently received her bachelor's degree in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a nanny in Richmond, Virginia, where she enjoys rock climbing, Yoga, and practicing Italian with her young charges.