While looking at the various topics, the area of “identity, privacy and safety” caught my interest immediately. This area deals with how centered life has become around the internet and how dangerous it can be to our private lives by making pretty much anything and everything readily available about ourselves to an infinite number of internet users, as well as making it easier for people to hide behind a computer screen while expressing opinions. This area includes everything from cyber bullying to online predators to defamation of character to identity theft, as well as many other areas.
With each generation of teenagers since the internet came into existence in the nineties, more and more of the daily lives and daily interactions of kids, as well as adults, are made through the internet, whether it be through Facebook, Youtube, AIM, or Chatroulette. Sites such as these make the digital dossiers (any personal information about a person collected on the internet or simply in digital form) and especially the digital tattoos (any information posted on the internet that can never be permanently removed since its retained even after you delete) into an ever expanding wealth of information that only grows as the kids age and post more and more on the internet about themselves.
Although the internet is one of the greatest technological inventions of the past two decades, it can also be one of the most threatening and dangerous if it’s users aren’t aware of its potential dangers. You never know just whose reading about you from the otherside of the screen.
