A bill that has been passed in California allows teenagers to have their online past deleted, should they request it.
However this new law has limitations. Content that the teenager has actively put up may be deleted, but posts that their friends have tagged them in cannot be removed. So this law in no way helps towards abolishing cyber bullying, it simply stops teenagers from being embarrassed by their old, silly self.
All teenagers post embarrassing things online that make them cringe years later when it creeps up on them. But this is part of learning, we all now know the risks of being too much of a presence online when you’re young, as the internet will hold onto that information forever.
Rather than giving kids this cop out, they should be taught that the internet will abuse your privacy, it will take your photos from websites and plaster them over others and it will document your awkward teenage days for as long as the internet is around.
Posting silly blogs and making juvenile comments on social networking sites is not the worst thing to find online. It’s unlikely that a comment made in 2007 will affect your university application, or an embarrassing picture of your 13 year old self, clad in double denim with a mop top, will deter any employer from hiring you.
There should be harsher laws on what teenagers post about each other online, not what they post themselves. Keeping your dignity intact might seem like the most important thing in the world, but you live and learn. Create an even better online presence to drown out the old one by knocking it off search engine results pages with fresh, professional information.
California shouldn’t be focused on protecting its teenagers’ dignity, it should be concerned about protecting the teenagers from online abuse.
