Sitting in my sixth grade class in my light-wash skinny jeans, peace sign graphic T-shirt, knock-off converse, and large beaded Claire’s bracelet, I listened intently to the conversation of my fellow classmates. Usually, conversations involving the internet centered around Webkinz and Club Penguin, but those were slowly fading out to be replaced by Facebook.
I sat in envy, listening to my peers detail how they had just picked the cutest profile picture, and how they were commenting, liking, and tagging posts to their heart’s delight. Soon, my friends joined the Facebook-owning crowd and I began to be bombarded with questions of:
I finally grew impatient and worked up the courage to ask my parents. These were the days before everyone had a personal computer in the palm of their hands. Instead, large, bulky computers took up most of the desk space in family rooms across the country, and my household was no exception. Because I was a goody-two-shoes kid, and because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away with it anyway, I turned to my parents. Now, I don’t want to say that I was a spoiled child, but unless I asked to go play outside in January with wet hair or walk twenty minutes to a friend’s house alone as a twelve-year-old, I was never told “no” when it came to most of my requests.
was the angry response that came from my father. Shocked, I retaliated, “Why not?!” My father, stubborn and strong-willed in his ways, was NOT a force to be reckoned with when he was decided about something one way or the other. My answer had triggered something in him and he launched into one of his famous “I have friends who are cops” stories. It goes like this: during a school assembly, some cop (whether it was my dad’s friend or not I can’t recall) took a picture of a girl from a display in the school’s trophy case, and using information found on her Facebook profile, he was able to produce a picture of her front door on Google Maps in the matter of minutes. If this is true, there are several things wrong with this story. First of all, the girl in question would have had to put personal information, like her address, on a public profile. The larger problem here, however, is that a member of law enforcement, an individual who is supposed to serve us and keep us safe, used this girl’s identity and breached her privacy without her consent. Of course, being a selfish twelve-year-old and growing up in a sexist, male-dominated society, my only focus was continual pleas with my father, explaining that I would never put personal information above my name on the internet, and I already knew how to make my profile private. So thinking I was experienced enough for a Facebook, I kept pestering my dad. And every time, he would launch into the same exact story, as though I hadn’t heard it four times previously. Our arguments would go back and forth, and nothing would come of them except for frustration and disappointment. I'm pretty sure that this is how my father viewed the internet:
Nevertheless, finally, something (probably my mom) convinced my dad to allow me to venture into the world of Facebook, with one very important exception: no actual pictures of me would make an appearance on the website until further notice. I wholeheartedly agreed, albeit a bit bummed that I couldn’t showcase my true self to the world. Nonetheless, I logged on, with a picture of some stuffed animals representing my identity, friended everyone I knew, and typed a triumphant yet purposefully chill and seemingly-unphased “hey peeps” and stepped into the digital world of social media.
For the next year and a half, I sat on the large, second hand computer chair picking off bits of the foam arm rests as I scrolled through Facebook, walking on eggshells and having to frantically text and call my friends every time they posted a picture of me from the most recent slumber party. If my dad happened to walk by and peer over my shoulder and see my face on the internet, my virtual life was over. Over time, I got tired of scouring the internet in a panic every time a picture-worthy event happened, trying to erase any trace of my existence from its pages.
One by one, I stopped notifying my friends when a picture with me in the background was posted. I’d think to myself:
Finally, at the age of fourteen, I selected a picture of myself from that past winter when my friends and I spent a day walking on the ice-covered lake that dominated my neighborhood and the surrounding area. I was looking off-camera towards my friends, laughing at what appeared to be a very funny joke. The picture had been on my mind for several months, and I’d revisit it frequently just to look at it. I was charmed by the genuine happiness I exhibited, and how I thought I looked good during that moment. This was during a time where it seemed everyone had a training manual on how to act in front of their peers, and my copy had gotten lost in the mail. All the other girls seemed so much prettier than me, with their cute layered Aeropostale t-shirts, lip gloss, and crimped hair, while I sat around at the with my graphic t-shirts with ninjas and puns on them and my mom’s old Avon eyeshadow that I found in a shoebox. Sitting around the lunch table with my sandwich, resisting the temptation to eat the second half, trying to “diet” at the young age of fourteen years old. If there was one moment of genuine happiness where I couldn’t tear apart my looks that I couldn’t change that happened to be captured, I wasn’t going to let it go. About a year later I had entered high school and my dad finally relented into letting me have pictures of myself on my Facebook profile. Although I had broken that rule a year prior, I was still thankful that I no longer had to look over my shoulder every time I visited my personal page. What started out as a quiet, rebellious, teenage act, ended up being a small victory I had won during the tumultuous and scary time of growing into the adult I am today.