Twitter Gen: Your Mom & the Whole Wide World Just Read Your Diary

Having my mom read my diary was one of the worst things that happened to me as a teen. I was sixteen years old and doing a lot-- but definitely not nearly all--of what sixteen year olds do, or rather did or had access to back in the day.

I’m 30-something plus a few so my teen hood was during the pre cell phone, internet technology- saturated era. I was devastated. In it I swore a little, confessed a lot, wrote about things I couldn’t wait to do when I was “grown” and whatever else I held in my teenage heart and mind.

I wrote in my diary generally when I was bored, pissed off, especially dreamy and feeling my teen spirit and angst. Frequency? Once a week at the max. In fact there would be months when I wouldn’t pick up a pen.

This diary of mine was kept under lock at key—the lock and key that came with the diary. You could probably pick it with a toothpick or shake it and open it, but I was certain of its security. And I kept the key separate; but somehow I slipped up one day and my mom, not only read my diary, but she confronted me with the things I’d written—the swears I swore, the confessions I fessed, the things I couldn’t wait to do when I was grown, the hate I held for her based on whatever she wouldn’t let me do at the moment and whatever else I held in my teenage heart and mind. The private life of this teenager? Vanished in an instant!

Why my mom read the diary? She read it to see what I was doing that I wasn’t telling. And as hurt and embarrassed as I was then, I cannot remember a single thing I’d written and our relationship now is none the worse for it.

What she did upon reading it was close some of the cracks I was falling through. She was always strict compared to my friends’ parents. As a single mom with an only child, perhaps she had to be. She boned up on her warden game, armed with the intel I’d unwittingly provided.

I was livid then, but as a mom now, I wholly understand. Privacy with kids has its limits. Okay, I don’t much believe in it. I think of the parents of the Columbine boys who massacred their schoolmates before killing themselves. They had the guns and hatched the entire plan to do what they did in their rooms. A little snooping goes a long way, not that I’m blaming the parents. Some may. I don’t. Kids will find a way to do what they want to do; and we are not our kids’ only influence. The streets are strong.

However, parents do have an obligation to keep them safe and right-path oriented by any means necessary and that includes invading their privacy and disabusing them of the notion that they have it at home. One of the best examples I’ve heard of this was former Miss America Vanessa Williams’ mom in an interview on Oprah Winfrey say that during Vanessa’s rebellious years, she actually took the door off the  hinges of her room door. Like I said…by any means necessary.

This brings me to the Twitter Generation. These young people are journaling in real time, texting and posting their every thought, feeling, deed and inclination online. Though www has been replaced with http, www still is the World Wide Web AKA the Whole Wide World.

OMG...WTF!!!

They’re swearing, sexting, screwing, gossiping and getting high and documenting every move in fever pitch. Sure they’re locking their parents out of their Tumblrs, tweets and Facebook pages. Each time a parent gets savvy enough to access whatever platform they’re on, they hide on another—or so they think.

Only now, any and everyone has a digital toothpick and can sift through their innermost thoughts and access their daily, sometimes hourly life updates.

These young people don’t know that hitting delete really doesn’t and that limiting stuff to “friends” doesn’t either. The stuff they put online is matter that cannot be destroyed. The photos they post, ideas they share,  and thoughts they think that are chronicling their coming into their own, though in the grand scheme of things may be fleeting, are made forever in this Information Age.

Read a young person’s Twitter posts and it’s like they’re scripting their very own reality show—uncut and unadulterated, warts and all. The private lives of young people with the glut of social media simply aren’t.

You can warn them with the stories of sexual predators or highlight the instances of someone being taken advantage of because of the information some freak lurking online has accessed. Nine times out of ten they only hear blah, blah, blah.

I hope none of it comes back to haunt them. Those documented experiences of young love and lust, smoking a joint or drinking underage and other once-private rites of passages that happen for many young people.

Moreover, I hope what they’ve texted, tweeted and posted doesn’t wind up splashed on a front page somewhere—“page” being the internet, a forwarded text, or national news, ruining a yet-evolving reputation, causing some kid to not get the benefit of the doubt and plain old embarrassing them in front of the world like I was in front of my mother, diary in hand.

Simply put, these public diaries made possible by social media make a young person’s uncensored private life fair game and in play for the rest of their lives. Really, the rest of their lives. And I’m not so sure they are ready for that.

And that's for free. -$$

-Zoe Breedlove on a Budget