The Benefits of Sharing Personal Information Online
Dec 1st, 2007 by Dan Blank
Jeff Jarvis lists the reasons why it is good that people are living life more publicly, by posting more personal details about themselves on blogs, social networks, and elsewhere on the web:
- People “will maintain friendships and other relationships longer in life,” since they will have an archive of experiences online, and multiple ways to contact them.
- A communal sense of openness won’t allow us to “pretend they’re anything more than just people…” we will all have done something embarrassing online at one time, and that will be forgiven.
- “It pushes us into social acts, into connecting with other people, even in subtle ways… Publicness allows us to join up to do more together than we could alone.”
His conclusion: “…young people have a different view of privacy and publicness because they realize you can’t make connections with people unless you reveal something of yourself.”