The South Florida Sun Sentinel got me thinking yesterday, with an article on “Disappearing privacy and the generation gap” by Liz Doup (requires free login).
In the article, Doup argues that before the Baby Boomers, older generations were quite private about their private lives. Journals with lock and key, never shown to anyone were fairly common. The Boomers “let it all hang out” and have a “tell-all mania”. This can be seen in their penchant for “reality” TV shows – programming that purports to look in on the real lives of other people (with their full consent, of course). Boomers have opened up a world where privacy is fading fast, and the younger generations have accepted it as normal.
In fact, the younger generations have been given technologies, like the Internet, blogs and camera-phones that open up even more avenues for self-exposure and lack of privacy. This is a mega-trend with value-shifting potential.
Letting it all hang out
