The Internet Is A Teenager
The internet may be 55 years old, but far from being in a mid-life crisis, it’s more like a teenager and that, is a wonderful thing.
Like any adolescent, it’s both brilliant and bafflingly daft. Both connecting families and democratising knowledge and the next day, amplifying conspiracy theories that would have any sane parent shaking their head. It can facilitate global trade but can’t remember your address from site to site. Just when regulators think they’ve set reasonable boundaries, someone finds a new loophole like a 16 year old discovering VPNs to bypass parental controls.
Once called an information superhighway, perhaps what we’re really dealing with is information superhormones. The internet may be 55 this year, but it’s behaving like a full-blown teenager. Perhaps that’s a better way to think of it. To realise it’s still more of a wild playground where the teachers have lost control. That may be a good thing.
On some days, this teenaged internet is bouncing around with high energy glee, pronouncing it will make the world a wonderful place, we will all live in abundance. The next it’s morose, barely grunts out a word, feeling doomed to surveillance capitalism and the defying its parents, the algorithms.
Just as it suffers the moody vagaries of a teen, so does it ride a rollercoaster of emotions. A new app or platform launches and it is giddy with excitement, the novelty of new and shiny things. Then everyone jumps on board, which is fun at first, until the adults in the digital room show up. The internet teen has been sold out and a nostalgic decline creeps in. Like MySpace and Facebook, perhaps now, X (Twitter?)
The algorithms set off waves of emotional turbulence where outrage and controversy rule the day, digital dopamine hits with highs and lows roiling over the wires and the WiFi.
Some places remain wild and wooly, unpredictable, both horrifying and fascinating like the teens hanging out in the off school property smoking area. Sometimes sulky and seedy looking, taunting you to join them, to come to the dark side and lurk.
Then there’s the cheerleaders, bouncing around the school yard and down the hallways, waving their wares and taking sponsorships, where everything is wonderful and bright and well, it largely is. A digital happyland of influence and promise.
Then there’s the pragmatic teenage internet. The one that sets the rules, leads the way with privacy laws, ethical standards and accountability, where the adults look on with pride at the teen who has the bright future.
There’s the nerdy internet teen club too, like the chess club or the D&D groups. Playing with blockchains and Web3, Discording and BlueSkying. The adults just don’t understand, the jocks are TikToking.
Of course there’s also that social awkweirdness of how to talk to one another like new kids in the class or how to ask someone to dance? Will today’s emoji mean the same thing tomorrow? Who’s in the popular club today may not be tomorrow. The ways of behaving, norms and cultural aspects change as much as a teen will change clothes in a day.
We should not forget the teen memory either. Fickle and easily distracted by a squirrel. Like your personal information is lost across three different sites when it could easily be remembered. How you check out on one site is unlike each and every one. The internet remembers everything but can’t put it to work somehow, always asking you the same thing it should remember. Like the search engine remembering embarrassing things, but forgetting what you asked it.
Some places are bright and shiny, others dark and gloomy. some days we think the internet is locked down, owned by the adults with subscriptions and locks everywhere with streaming channels and no more original apps.
It’s quite the opposite. There are neighbourhoods unexplored. Like teens who are testing the adults and the parents, so are people still dreaming up new ideas. Pushing the boundaries as teens are wont to do. Brash, bold and breaking things, then fixing them.
The internet too, is like a teenage boys room. Utterly messy and in need of a deep cleaning service. So many protocols, lumps of old code laying around stinking things up. Molding routers and frayed wires. The window a crack open so friends can slip in undetected in the wee hours, stealing your data too. They gave us the cloud to put all our junk in, but the drawers are stuffed with stinky old socks of hard drives and USB sticks.
The technologies, netiquette and behaviours are changing so rapidly it is hard to keep up. The older generations of fax machines and actual phone conversations are baffled, bewitched and enamoured all at the same time.
The internet is far from a grown up. It is moody and emotional, hormonal while still being filled with wonder and excitement. Wanting to grow up and not wanting to at the same time. Yes, the internet is still a teenager. That’s quite lovely.