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Big Brother is Over, Make Way for Big Sister: Teens on the Net Originally Published in Toronto Computes, May 1999  Big Brother is the old world order of the information age. Big Sister is emerging now, and her reign comes with an entirely new set of problems vs. her Orwellian sibling. Ultimately, Big Brother won't let you grow up; Big Sister really wants to help you do it. I have been studying how children and teens behave in online environments for the past three years. Still, you, too, may find yourself playing the role of Big Sister online. Where teens lurk Hiding behind a deceptively mature user ID on your buddy list, lurking within the witty comments in your chat room, or disguised as a Javascript expert in your users group discussion forum could be a real, live teenager. One cannot accuse teens of posing as adults; they would simply respond that age does not matter online. Initially, the interactive arena emphasizes the limitations of demographics. Age does become secondary to a combination of diverse interests, communication skills, technical expertise, and participation. Constant and instant communication invites the informal and the personal to creep into information exchanges, however. It's the shift to the personal that has let me become friends with some of my former study participants. It's also the personal that reasserts the drama of demographics. Personal exchanges emphasize just how much of life's development can be predicted by how long each of us have been on this planet. And that brings me to my teenage e-pals. It's usually a privilege to hear from Lisa, 17, in Australia, and from Debbie, 16, in Florida (not their real names). They lead similar lives in their respective countries. Both of them are taking on freelance Web-design contracts while they attend school. One edits the school newspaper; the other, the school magazine. Both are watching the great big world unfold before them and it is rich with possibility and excitement. It reminds me of the good parts of being a teenager. "What should I do?" Then, there are the other parts of being a teenager. Within a few days of each other, Lisa and Debbie both sent me e-mail messages that went beyond the "I am fine, here's what I'm up to" variety. "I met this great guy online. We've been talking for hours and hours by ICQ every night. He wants me to meet him in a city about an hour from here on Saturday, but I already have a boyfriend," Lisa wrote. "I met my boyfriend online and he lives in New Jersey. I am stressed out from school and I just had a fight with everyone in my entire family. I need someone to be there for me right now and I just miss him so much," Debbie said. Both signed off with the same phrase, those four dreaded words: "What should I do?" Now, you may (or may not) find this confession surprising, especially coming from a technology professional, but at 26 I am still a romantic klutz. Career-planning advice, education advice, or even a little homework help are all things that I can handle. Relationship advice is out of my league. I've been collecting it for over a decade now and, to tell the truth, I've never received any that I could use. Still, they trusted me. Distance and digitized text do not negate trust. I had to come up with something. The only tools that I knew were absolutely essential to communicating with teens online are blatant honesty and speed. No guts, no glory Teenagers, especially teens online, thrive on guts, on honesty, and on being frank. It's adults who, for good reason, are reluctant to talk about how teens use the Net to explore romance, relationships, and sexuality. Female teen sexuality is even more of a taboo, since it is tied to issues of negative character judgments, selfÐesteem, and the dangers of pregnancy. And, let's face it, teenage sexuality and romance are all the more painful to hear about having survived it. Try to read the letters submitted by teenagers to the Break Up Girl site and you'll see what I mean. But honesty is secondary to speed. Teenage romances and the internet actually happen in the same time zone. An individual teen's emotional wiring is subject to rapid, radical, and complete change on a constant basis. They have to deal with those changes with the same urgency, sleeplessness, and desperate effort to keep up that any technical developer faces when she stares down a deadline. That my advice could be obsolete before it arrives was actually a comfort. So, I nodded to honesty. I told them that there are no rules. I said that those who told them that there are rules would condemn them to a passionless existence. I said; "This problem will be solved eventually, just keep your eyes open for all the consequences that come with possible solutions, and choose the one least likely to do any permanent damage." And, right after I clicked on "send," I thought I had copped out. After all these years of evolving communications tools, after all the innovation, all the Big Sister era of the information age has to offer is the same advice that adults have been giving to teenagers for generations. If there's any comfort to be had from that observation, it's that Big Sister doesn't quite sound exactly like your mother.
Big Brother is Over, Make Way for Big Sister: Teens on the Net
N-Gen: Teenagers talk only to those they know
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