Doing Behavioral work with kids and adolescents has given me a distinct vantage that most people in my generation (the young working generation) and especially the older generation do not have. I observe tomorrows trends forming before they hit a mainstream explosion. This is true for music, fashion, and most importantly, web technology.
Lately, I have been reading a lot of business literature, and the buzzword in the industry these days is “social media”. All of the big wigs in suites are praising social media and Facebook as if it crawled out of primordial sludge yesterday, and 
they are hedging all of their bets on it being the future of business. While I don’t disagree that their vision of an interconnected web of weak interpersonal boundaries feeding the voyeuristic appetite of a preying advertising machine is as certain possibility, I don’t ever read articles where people speculate that there could be a decline in people’s dependence on Facebook. In this interview with Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, Hoffman mocks Zuckerberg’s insistence that everything will be social in the future, and I agree with him.
There are some steps forward that cannot be taken back- once out of the bag, certain cats will not go return. People are going to share funny photos and video, personal photos, and will share messages with their social community. However, having a universal hangout where everything is shared in one location? Those days happened, and I don’t expect them to stick around.
Back when social communities (i.e. Friendster and MySpace) first began, kids loved them because they could post all of the trash talking and flirting that took place in school online (I was part of that generation). This lasted for a few years before the adults began to take notice, and they were appalled by the private lives of their children. Sex and drugs hit harder and sooner than they ever anticipated, and they couldn’t believe the filth leaving their children’s mouths. In retaliation, kids started making their profiles private or making separate ones that their parents didn’t know about to once again regain some privacy over their lives. MySpace became despised by the public as it was an online predators’ wet dream: personal information about youth and their habits (often containing places of residence, phone numbers, and even intimate photos) as well as unregulated (by parents and authorities) access to communicate with them. Law enforcement caught on to the party eventually, but not before significant damage was done.
Image-conscious young adults of the collegiate population flocked to the more exclusive community forming on Facebook. Because membership was limited to only the best Universities in the country, people used their real names to register, establishing a trend of authenticity in the content they shared that I don’t feel most users today understand. In the days of MySpace, AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, people used handles that often hid their true identities. Digital camera and webcams were so expensive and of low quality that very few people had digital media to represent their “real” lives anyway. The pre-Facebook Internet had a lot of people hiding behind digital masks in dark, HTML covered rooms. When Facebook arrived, college students put their real names, real interests, real stories and real photos online because they thought that only their close friends, who were doing the same, would see this information. It wasn’t long before more exclusive colleges and universities were added to the list. As the pool of un-included exclusive universities shallowed, less-exclusive, larger schools were added. Next, High School students were included, and belong, the general public followed. Facebook lost it’s exclusivity, but strangely, the culture of transparency remained. People were still signing up using their real names, sharing real interests, stories and photos.
Something else happened with the expansion of Facebook that never happened with MySpace nor Friendster: adults from older generations decided to trust Facebook and it’s clean reputation. Advertisers and marketers were loving it: finally, everyone was at the party! And everyone was naked! There was plenty of money to be made selling clothes when you could clearly see what size everyone wore.
The marketers, advertisers and big wigs because so excited to be included in this party that they missed on small detail: the MySpace problem had reared it’s head again, bringing the generational chase full circle. Whenever adults join the kids’ party, the party suddenly becomes not cool. And this is a good thing. Grandma doesn’t want to read about little Kathy’s night out at the club any more than Katy wants her grandmother to know about that night. Yet, because of Facebook’s many social features, that information is pushed into our feeds. The new privacy features are confusing people. So how are kids going to keep adults out of their personal lives again? There are two options: stop using Facebook or stop the transparent use of social media.
A possible trend of declining Facebook use be in progress. Google+, Google’s attempt to mimic Facebook, was not the hit everyone expected it to be. Is it possible that kids these days are tired of social media? Or it is that they’re becoming smarter about it? The kids that I work with don’t trust putting their personal information online the way they did five years ago- they’re afraid that their parents are going to find out what they have been up to. They aren’t as trusting with their real name and photos anymore because they’ve seen how easily celebrities get their accounts hacked. They are becoming more clever and guarded with their personal information. However, thanks to the desensitization and boundary breaking of nearly a decade’s worth of exposure to Facebook, their concept of what is considered private information may have been permanently altered. Only time will tell.
e in two months! This summer, celebrations will abound! 
