Social Web's digital divide

…is between generations. It's the one between self-exposing teens and their worried elders. New York magazine reports that "the future belongs to the uninhibited"? It could well be so, but I definitely agree with writer Emily Nussbaum that we haven't seen a generation gap like this for "perhaps 50 years…. You have to go back to the early years of rock and roll, when … everything associated with that music and its greasy, shaggy culture felt baffling and divisive." Emily quotes Lakshmi Chaudhry in The Nation as saying that, "when it is more important to be seen than to be talented [and] without any meaningful standard by which to measure our worth, we turn to the public eye for affirmation." Don't miss what she hears from New York University new media Prof. Clay Shirky about what he's learned from his students as he's watched their use of social media evolve, steeped as they are in an environment - so alien to their parents - in which everybody can have a fan base. For example, Emily tells the story of 19-year-old Columbia U. student Xiyin Tang, who "knows there's a scare factor in having such a big online viewership – you could get stalked for real, or your employer could bust you for partying. But her actual experience has been that if someone is watching, it's probably a good thing…. All sorts of opportunities – romantic, professional, creative – seem to Xiyin to be directly linked to her willingness to reveal herself a little." Also don't miss the section under "Change 2" in which 17-year-old Caitlin Oppermann offers her perspective on the "conventional wisdom about the online world, that it's a sketchy bus station packed with pedophiles," and on how self-exposing teens repair damage to their images or reputations.