A recent article by Michelle Slatalla in the New York Times struck my interest. I’ll summarize briefly, however it’s worth a read on it’s own:

A mother signs up for facebook, searches for her daughter’s name, and slowly begins to befriend all of her friends. Mother states:

“Shockingly, quite a few of them - the friends, not the daughter - accepted my invitation and gave me access to their Profiles, including their interests, hobbies, school affiliations and in some cases, physical whereabouts.”

Daughter finds out, states:

“unfriend paige right now. im serious. i dont care if they request you. say no. i will be soo mad if you dont unfriend paige right now.”

As social applications become more and more popular, you’ll cross that generational bridge. Privacy which was once there due to ignorance will suddenly be violated, leaving everything you chose to make public seen and archived.

Consider the Wayback Machine. When I was 12, I never would have considered or even comprehended the idea that my first website might be cached forever. Were you thinking that way? Most of us didn’t, yet at some point we began to.

Or take another example: Instant messaging. I’m always on. Will my kids, too? Will they filter their away messages or profiles, knowing I might possibly view the information they are making publicly available?

I have a feeling this learning and yearning for privacy will begin to show in more and more web applications, where we’ll not only continue to see “parental controls” but we’ll begin seeing options to filter and control each generations access to the other.