Recently at work we had a group discussion about the effect the digital world has on children.
When I was born the digital world was just starting, and my parents had no idea. They weren't able to upload pictures of me and my sisters onto social media or even document the harsh reality of parenting in a blog.
How times have changed! Now every moment of a childs upbringing can be documented through images, videos and weekly detailed written accounts.
But what about the children? 'THINK OF THE CHILDEN'.
Lets look ten years into the future when my nephew turns 15. What will he be able to find on the internet?
Every single picture of him ever taken and believe me we all take a lot!
There's pictures of him a few hours old, statuses of the nights he kept my sister awake and even videos of us laughing at the way he mispronounces words (Fork and Spoon sounds like Fuckin' Spoon - we shouldn't laugh I know).
From this angle I love it - we have a cyber photo album that probably has 50x more pictures than any of my baby albums. Not only do we have a lot but they're spontaneous and natural showing their everyday life whilst my baby pictures are all posed, in a family members house and probably only taken on special occasions.
Hi Miles, if you're reading this aged 15, here's your first day of big school. Also, sorry about laughing at your pronunciations - you got their in the end.
However at the moment we're educating teenagers about how to use the internet - don't talk to strangers, don't put inappropriate pictures on social media and always remember your future employers will find those pictures!
So will future employers find all my nephews baby pictures and have full insight into his upbringing? In the future will this have an impact on job offers?
Is this good or bad? I'm torn.
We don't have a great deal of insight on how this will effect children in the future because even current teenagers never had their upbringing documented in this way.
It's going to be fascinating to find out because not only will this impact children but also the parents. If they can find that baby picture you took of them, they can also find that drunken picture you took in Zante when you were 18.
So to my children who may have found this blog along with many pictures of me when I was your age -
Do as I say not as I do ;-)
- oh and don't wear hoop earrings. As you can see from this picture it's not a good look when you're drinking stella!
Whilst I'm on this topic please don't drink Stella either.
