Reflections on Context Collapse


Inspired by Dr. Dennen's VoiceThread for class this week, the photo above is from 2010 of my brother and I. It is one of my mother's very first Facebook profile pictures and has been semi-easily accessible to anyone who can see my tagged photos for the last decade. As one of the last rounds of Millennials, most of my middle school and high school photos found their way onto my Myspace, Instagram, and Facebook as well as my mother's and friends' pages. A few years ago, I had this realization and did a deep clean through my personal pages, often making these albums of memory under the privacy setting "Only Me." I did not want future employers to see my awkward middle school years! This concept of context collapse has me reflecting on digital natives (and particularly Gen Z). Context collapse is the idea that we can control how transparent we are with our lives in certain spaces. So many of these digital natives have been "online" since they were born. Nearly every person I know posts on Facebook within days photos of having a baby. That newborn already now has a digital footprint. So, will Gen Z even have the option to context collapse? Or will their intertwined upbringing in digital spaces make that a very difficult task?

I have a cousin who just finished eighth grade this week. She is one of these Gen Z, digital natives who has had her photos on Facebook since she was a baby (in finding the photo above, I found an album for her fourth birthday party). While she may grow up to want a Facebook page clean of all embarrassing childhood memories, someone in her community could easily be connected to my mom and see the photos from that birthday party or her mom sharing Facebook memories from a decade ago and tagging her. 

These digital natives have had nearly their entire lives online, even before they could concept to being shared on such a large, online platform. So for anyone reading, what do you think context collapse will look like for digital natives? How much of their narrative will they be able to control on these platforms? 

Comments

  1. BayraiderJune 9, 2020 at 5:04 PM

    Interesting thoughts. A few times on "Throwback Thursday" I have posted pictures of friends from high school theater, or pictures taken while on Navy cruise. I don't think any of them were embarrassing, but I am not in their shoes.
    One recently was very positive though. She was a very pretty pilot and I caught here with the Athens skyline behind her. I posted it to her husband (my old boss) and she was so happy, because she had no pictures from the cruise they met on!

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  2. LeeJune 17, 2020 at 4:39 PM

    I was hyper-conscious of that when raising my millennial and gen-z kids. I don't post identifiable pictures of them in public spaces, and they haven't been allowed to use their real information in online spaces while underage. One upside was that they've come up with some funny pseudonyms.

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  3. JFoxxJune 18, 2020 at 3:28 PM

    This is a very interesting thought, and I hadn't stopped to consider that the new generations haven't really had a choice in their digital footprint. I do think as social media and technology continues to progress that our privacy rules and regulations will continue to progress as well, there just may be a lag. So we may see some negative effects and context collapse for Gen Z but I think the pendulum will start to shift back the other way as privacy settings and rules catch up with the technology.

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