I’ve come accross a couple of interesting articles in the last week. They’ve not all focussed exclusively on ‘privacy’, but they’ve mentioned it somewhere. What has me interested is that they’re not all saying the same thing. In fact they’re saying some very different things about the future of how much I’ll be inclined to let you know about me?

The New York Times carried an article, ‘The Tell-All Generation Learns Not To – At Least Online’. They suggest that today’s young people are showing signs of bucking the ‘tell-all’ trend we’ve seen emerge, that has us in a panic aboutwhat’s appropriate and what’s not.

The conventional wisdom suggests that everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online, from their favorite pizza to most frequent sexual partners. But many members of the tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud.

On the other end of the spectrum you have articles like, ‘Life in 2020: Your Dating History on Display and Other Faintly Disturbing Predictions‘, from FastCompany, that suggest your dating life is going to be all out there for all to see.

Imagine 10 years from now, you order a Bacon and Cheese Whopper, only for a monitor to tell you precisely how many grueling miles you’ll have to run to burn it off. Or someone just glances at your shoes and knows where you bought them. Or consider this: You walk into a bar and your entire dating history is thrown up on display. Would you run for the hills? (I sure as hell would.)

It’s going to be an interesting trend to watch. Will it be a pendulum swing? If Chat Roulette is anything to go by, we’re still swinging (excuse the pun) to ‘wide open’, but there will be lessons that are learned as we adjust. Where that adjustments settles down to, if it does at all, is going to be interesting?

I did smile at a story from Mashable, ‘48% of Parents Friend Their Kids on Facebook‘. If this stat has any truth to it, it’s little wonder today’s younger set are going into lock down mode. It’s not because of morals, or thinking about their future. It’s simply because mom and dad are watching : )