Privacy and Perks of Digital Communication !

It is wild how much I can relate to the young girls and their actions in this book, even though my first young online experiences were about 10 years ago. Young females have not seemed to change the ways in which they use instant messaging or in present time, facebook, etc. or the way they keep it secret from adults. When I was younger I only had access to aol.com and its instant messaging feature. I first starting communicating with my friends on it when I was ten and never had secrets to keep from my parents, even when the computer was located only in my mother’s room. However as young girls grow older life seems to become more complicated and we become more open minded, and close it off from parents.
It seems true that it is important to keep certain information from parents, because they are too scared they will get caught and in trouble. However, I never got anywhere in the technological world because my mother and father were up to par with computer knowledge and even knew more than I did. I was put under as many parental controls as possible and even limited to who I talked to. I think it’s a good idea to put young girls under parental controls to prevent the 1 in 5 statistic from continuing. Predators are out there and they are not going to go away, whether we like it or not so it is always better to be safe than sorry. However I do not believe the same for the actual instant message conversation. Parents should not be able to invade the privacy of their daughters, just like they shouldn’t read their diaries. Instant message is a silent private way to converse and vent to others without any outside sources having to read it. There are some things that are meant to be kept private and be respected.
As opposed to when I was younger and used instant messenger on aol to talk to some people, girls these days along with the rest of the world use facebook as their ultimate communication and expression tool. Facebook is a much more open place than IM and allows for a person to convey more of a personality to many people. However there are so many privacy options, that a profile can range from something only a few close friends can see to the whole world and offers many options from cause pages to millions of “like” options to express oneself.