By Alex Zhai
Gargoyle staff reporter
Published Friday, Dec. 16, 2005, Gargoyle, features

WITHIN THE PAST few years, Uni has embraced the technology of the Internet, and more than ever students are using the Internet as a means of communication. Earlier this fall there was controversy over the Uni “Gossip Girl” blog, and more recently there have been questions about Facebook and student privacy.

All of this brings into question what online communication has done for us. How are the social lives of teenagers being changed by the Internet?

This is an issue that Uni librarian Frances Jacobson Harris confronted while writing her recent book, “I Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online.” With instant messaging becoming increasingly ubiquitous and the advent of Web logs (commonly shortened to “blogs”), there is an important difference between now and a decade or so ago.

“[The technology today] makes personal drama public,” says Harris, whose book was published in April by the American Library Association.

Bloggers pour their thoughts regularly into their blogs, and those who use instant messaging often have many conversations going on at the same time. The volume of communication is increased dramatically by online technology. Thus, it should come as no surprise that private matters become more exposed.

At Uni, because each class is so small, and everyone has some degree of concern for everyone else, the “personal drama” is likely to spread farther. However, Harris sees the underlying dynamic as largely the same regardless of the school.

This phenomenon can have both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, the online social environment offers new opportunities by extending the social life of a high school student beyond the realm of school.

“Because of blogs, people find out things about each other they wouldn't otherwise,” notes Harris.

Also, information travels with unprecedented speed and efficiency by the Internet, bringing issues out into the open more than before. By setting forth the issues clearly, misunderstanding from miscommunication can be confronted while fostering constructive discussion.

Prior to the Internet, the details of information passed by word of mouth would have been fuzzy. For this reason, Harris does not consider things like the recent Uni gossip blog a serious problem.

Meanwhile, the same technology that brings new dimensions to teenagers' lives can have adverse ramifications as well. While most students, particularly at Uni, have probably learned by now not to trust online strangers in chat rooms, Harris believes that people still do not realize how much of their personal information is readily available online in places such as Facebook.

But there are other problems too.

“There's more to fear from people you know than people you don't know,” says Harris.

Excluding a classmate could be as effortless as changing a few settings on an instant-messaging service. Behind-the-back gossiping is easier in the privacy of an individual chat, compounded by the sheer scale of online activity. Yet at the same time, an unfortunate slip in a blog is seen by everyone, and a regrettable comment in a chat could be saved or copied and pasted somewhere else.

“People don't understand that the shelf life is a lot longer than you think,” says Harris.

Despite the often transient appearance of Internet communication, what you write can be easily recorded.

Overall, however, Harris does not find our increasing dependence on the Internet particularly good or bad.

“In the end,” she says, “communications technology is no better or worse or different than the person who uses it.”