'Slinky Sarah” has long blonde tresses and curvy, generous contours just made
for a bikini. She is wearing a skimpy blue one, right now before my eyes.
The 25-year-old Londoner, whose real name is Sarah Thomas, says she’s “really
only into girls”, likes clubbing and going to house parties. That’s just for
starters. She also craves bondage, “being tied up and being in charge”.
I logged on to her home page on an internet site just seconds ago, and now
there really isn’t much more for me to find out about her. I know her height
(5ft 7in), her weight (10 stone) and that her body type is “slim and toned”.
I also know she enjoys all kinds of fetishes and skinny dipping in public
pools. All that personal information at the click of a mouse.
After this frank disclosure, where do we go next? That’s an easy one to
answer. Another click will deliver her X-rated adult photos.
“Slinky Sarah” belongs to Face-party.com, one of the increasingly popular
social networking internet sites. Along with “Gucci Diva”, a 19-year-old
from Gravesend in Kent, and Luke Brawn, 16, from Leicester, she has signed
up to meet people on the internet and chat online.
Recently Mike Robbins, a 20-year-old student at Oxford, decided to come out
online. “I was surprised by how many people read it,” he says, “and so I
have some regrets about the stuff I’ve posted in the past . . . I’m
generally a very open person.” Mike is not his real name; he has yet to
share his news with his parents.
Three thousand miles away, across the Atlantic, Kitty Ostapowicz, 26, a
barmaid in Manhattan, describes her nudity on the net as a “documentation of
my youth”. Like Slinky Sarah’s, her site shares more than flesh. It tells of
her sex life, her missed periods, her break-ups, the deaths of her parents.
Mike, Sarah and Gucci, Luke and Kitty all bear witness to a new cultural
phenomenon. Young people are making their personal and graphic information
freely available on the net to an extent that leaves an older generation
perplexed. They blog, we blush.
Teenagers and students are signing up in their millions to Bebo, Facebook,
YouTube, MySpace and other websites. Ellen Helsper, research fellow at the
Oxford Internet Institute, says: “You have to have a page on MySpace or
YouTube to be anyone these days. It is all about status and popularity.”
The internet has become a confessional tool. Instead of diaries, these
teenagers have bare-all blogs; instead of photo albums, Flickr. An
astonishing 6m photographs are uploaded on Facebook daily. This is not the
Me Generation but the Look At Me Generation.
The members of these “peer to peer” sites no doubt want the same things that
most young people want: caring and sharing friends and a vibrant social
life. But to older generations still wrestling with the concepts of Bebo,
Facebook and MySpace, all similar sites, this way of hooking up with people
and baring one’s secrets can seem utterly alien. A recent article in New
York magazine claimed that the advent of confessional blogging represented
the greatest generation gap since rock’n’roll.
A British survey carried out last year revealed that 10% of people aged 16-34
had used an online social network compared with less than 1% of those aged
55 and over. A similar study by the US government showed that 61% of 13 to
17-year-olds have an online profile, half with photos.
William Nelson, senior consultant at the Future Foundation, a commercial think
tank, believes that attitudes to privacy alter with age. “Younger people
tend to be much more pragmatic about handing over personal details,” he
says. “They tend to be more relaxed about things like identity cards, too.”
Their content isn’t all raunchy. Facebook acts like a college yearbook, much
of its content completely anodyne. Launched three years ago as a service for
Harvard students, it spread rapidly across campuses and high schools before
crossing the Atlantic the following year.
In September last year anyone was allowed to join, creating a digital
micro-society. An Etonian told me last week: “The entire sixth form has
signed up. It’s everywhere.”
Jake Hewlett, a 21-year-old law student at Oxford Brookes University, shares a
house with five other undergraduates, all of whom have recently joined a
social network. He has about 300 friends listed on his page, mostly former
schoolfriends and fellow students, but others have many more.
“Like anything on the net it’s open to abuse,” he says. “But for us it’s all
about logging on and being included. You know what’s going on in your
friends’ lives, whose birthday is coming up and what parties are going on
where. It’s invaluable for disorganised people. It can change their lives.”
But the flip side of all that inclusion is exclusion. At amiworthit.com
students who “want to know if they are worth it” endure a three-day
appraisal, during which existing members are asked to rate their photos
based on attractiveness. Only those who make the grade can join.
Recent headlines have revealed a spate of bullying on the internet. Even
worse, paedophiles have been able to log on with a false identity to
befriend vulnerable youngsters. Last week a group of MPs in Liverpool called
for stricter policing of the sites. Should parents be worrying?
Helsper says security is uppermost in any web designer’s mind. “The publishers
are constantly working on measures to ensure security and avoid predators.”
Some sites are already closed, requiring a password. Users can only view the
profile of someone in their own network, such as their university, town or
company, and they have the option of using privacy controls to ban unwelcome
visitors.
Helsper is a social psychologist who has carried out research into young
people and the internet. She sees little danger in networking sites.
“I think we should think of them as an extension of the playground,” she says.
“These youngsters are doing what their peers do: gossiping, playing games
and creating nicknames. In that spirit of experiment they will always post
things they wish they hadn’t. There will be inevitable repercussions. But
that, too, is a way of learning. Mostly they are interacting with people
they are going to see the next day. It’s a bit like going to the mall after
school.”
Parents, she says, should not fret. Young people have appropriated the
internet and are comfortable with it. Helsper sees the creation of personal
space as a platform for creativity, citing musicians such as Lily Allen and
Arctic Monkeys, who achieved success via the web. “Creating an online
profile can build confidence. Young people are having to put themselves out
there, at school, at university, and for jobs. And if they have talent, they
can show it.”
Others agree with Helsper. Digby Tantam, professor of psychotherapy at
Sheffield University, believes the internet can be a liberating force due to
“the stranger effect”, described by Georg Simmel, a 19th century German
philosopher.
“He observed that strangers tend to have a curious effect upon people,” Tantam
says. “They draw out secrets that no one would ever tell a neigh-bour, and
they are nonjudgmental. And this is predicated on the idea that they will
never be seen again. That is why people can confide in a machine with such
ease. You don’t fear consequences.”
As a practising psychiatrist, Tantam has put this liberation effect to good
use. An advocate of online cognitive therapy, he uses the anonymity of the
computer to reach out to patients in denial, particularly alcoholics and
ano-rexics. “When it comes to revealing their habits, patients will tell the
truth to a machine about how much they actually drink and eat.”
Tantam can begin to treat them via e-mail before arranging for them to see a
therapist face-to-face. The new can-dour is paying dividends. “Because they
find it easier to talk to a computer than a doctor, they are very honest.
This opens up a whole new world.”
Additional reporting: Lucy Tobin and Ben Ryder
