I met my wife when my internet access was restricted to a 36 kps modem at one computer in my office, next to the fax machine in the secretaries’ room.
I bought my first mobile phone after we’d been together for about six months. It would be a year or two before text messaging started in the UK.
If we phone one another in the day during that honeymoon period it would be on a land-line. That would happen maybe once a day.
I had email. She didn’t.
So… I have no idea what online dating, or the early stages of a relationship conducted in the modern world is like. I’ve never had a Facebook status other than married and I’ve never had to de-friend an ex and divide up our friends online like so many paperback books.
Have some sympathy, then, for today’s yoot. While it may be easier to meet potential partners, once you have the etiquette is shifting as fast as the technologies and if you happen across someone whose boundaries are different to your own, there might be trouble. Your web shadow, social network presences and always-on personal comms device (mobile) mean that when things you don’t like kick off they kick off fast.
Encouraging, then, to see sites like thatsnotcool.com offering teens a helping hand with dealing with a terrifyingly long list of behaviours that might upset them, including:
- Cyber-bullying
- Pestering via email and texts
- Malicious slander
- Hacking email and social network accounts
- Asking for inappropriate photos
- Posting said photos online
The has advice, spaces to discuss these issues and an amusing/disturbing set of “call-out cards” you can send / post to a harasser’s web page by way of a hint to them to back off (a selection of which are below)…
Via Dirk at Herd
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