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Web Writers Discuss Growing Up Online

March 18, 2009 12:32 PM

ABC News On Campus reporter Chelsey Delaney blogs:

Some grew up with parochial sports leagues, karate and or ballet, Sesame Street and the Berenstain Bears, and a favorite color that suspiciously changed depending on the masculinity of peers. And some grew up online.

Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival panel, “Brief History of Growing up Online,” helped me and many others to justify a childhood spent with a computer.

The panel consisted of five “microcelebrities” who arose during the Internet’s puberty in the mid-1990s: online journalists Maria Diaz, Anna Genoese, Mark Shrayber, Sarah Wulfeck (back then she called herself “Puce” and had a webcam to document angst), and Gala Darling, who operates the fashion and lifestyles Web site iCiNG.

Never did I think I would hear the words “Geocities” and “Angelfire” (both Internet services offering free space to host your own center-aligned, white-text-on-black-background Web site) again after my own experience of making fan sites for popular grunge bands in 1998.

Nor could I predict the real historical value of online-journaling communities like Livejournal, now a veteran of the trade.

Writer and panelist Diaz labels the 1990s online teen subculture “the oversharers,” because that’s precisely what we did.

“I was suspended for writing a sex column from the view of our school librarian,” Shrayber said. “That’s when I realized how dangerous online journals could be.”

Has history led us here? A study released last year by the nonprofit Internet Safety Technical Task Force found that children are now more likely to be bullied by their peers on social networking sites than be attacked by sexual predators.

The panel attempted to define “oversharing,” and grappled with what should be on the Internet.

“If you’re a writer, it’s natural to write what you feel and what you want and get feedback,” Darling said. “We were just expressing ourselves the easiest we could and didn’t expect a backlash.”

Thirteen years have passed since the “unrecognizable Internet of 1996,” as Diaz termed the period.  "Oversharing" in 2009 has become even more visible and a little more threatening. Schools and institutions prepare for online bullying over physical bullying, and have started to set policies to enforce this.

“Online journaling was a learning process,” Shrayber said. “As more social media tools become available, children and teens will need to recognize the lines not to cross."

Welcome to the virtual playground.

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