The Internet can be pretty scary; at least that’s what we’ve been told. Internet prowlers are waiting to steal your name, your picture and possibly even your pet’s identity. Day after day, buildings full of hackers typing codes into supercomputers are waiting to become you and ruin your life forever.
The truth is you’re not going to win, so why try? So, here’s my suggestion: don’t.
This could be terrible advice; in fact, it’s at least bad advice. I’m no Internet security expert, and I can’t tell you how safe you should be on the Web, but it doesn’t really matter. If you want to survive in today’s world you’re going to have to make your Internet presence known. You can either fall off the grid “Unabomber”-style or spread your technological wings and fly through cyberspace on your mythical dog of tech-savviness.
I started using Twitter in April 2008 because I didn’t want to die. Well, more accurately, I didn’t want to end up in an Egyptian prison without anyone knowing.
I found out about the micro-blogging site when I read on cnn.com about James Karl Buck, an American graduate student who was in Egypt covering a protest against the government.
Buck was detained on April 10, 2008, but he was able to tweet a one word message to his friends and followers in Egypt and America – “Arrested.”
Lucky for Buck, he had Twitter, a site people have often called “pointless,” “silly” or “dumb,” but to him it was a lifesaver, literally. His message got through, and soon he was released.
The logic here seems simple, if you don’t get an account on Twitter, you may get arrested and nobody will ever know. (Well, that may be an exaggeration, but who wants to risk it?)
Today’s discerning college student knows the value of social networking. This can be seen by the fact that almost any student would be completely lost without Facebook.
How would that student know when their favorite local ’80s hair-metal cover group would be playing at the club or what 18th century British Tory politician best fits his/her personality? Students can find out almost instantly if they missed an assignment. They can message a classmate and know what they need to do to be a better student, and ultimately a better human being.
Your next employer is going to look up your Facebook page, and hopefully, if you’re smart, you’ll have looked up their page, too. Unlike the generations before us, today’s college students shouldn’t be afraid of the Internet because they have grown up using it.
It’s weird, but these Web sites are a fabric of our existence; and for many, the formation of your relationships has been totally molded and documented on the Internet. Your first relationship may have been documented on Facebook, you may have marked a life-changing epiphany with a tweet or blogged about your latest meal. In any case technology is making it easier for you to do things better.
Today’s 20-somethings are smarter because of all this technology at their fingertips. An article titled, “How Google is Making Us Smarter,” in the February 2009 issue of Discover, explains just that.
It describes how studies at places like the University of Texas have shown that with vast Internet resources like Google and Wikipedia and networks like Facebook and Twitter, people are able to waste less space in their brains storing useless facts, such as the knowledge that Gavrilo Princip killed Franz Ferdinand to jump-start World War I, the origins of ancient Sumerian Cuneiform or even your roommate’s cell phone number. The best part: Today’s students are on the forefront of using these sites.
Are you going to meet your demise if you don’t take advantage of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, MySpace, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Flickr or Stumbleupon? Probably not, but the opportunities from these emerging networks and ways of selling yourself, as well as understanding the world, far outweigh the consequences of hiding from them.
Just ask Buck, if he’d turned his nose up at Twitter, he could very possibly still be in a dark, hopeless Egyptian prison today.
Kyle Wrather is the news editor of The Reflector. He can be contacted at [email protected].