MWA 28, 29, 30 - Online Identity

And now for something completely different.
I get that I'm in this weird micro-generation on the border between "Generation X" and "Millennials," in a limbo between "I didn't get a computer until high school" and "INTERNET IS MY WHOLE LIFE OMFG!"

I get that.

I had a computer as a child, but I started with Windows 3.1, and the most powerful (aka, best-looking) computer games at the time required that lovely fossil of tech-lingo, "restart in DOS mode".

I didn't get Internet access until just before high school, and even now I refuse to get a laptop or smartphone because my concept of the Internet involves sitting behind a desk.
I still use the phrase "spending too much time online," which even many of my former schoolmates find perplexing in a world of always-online, always-connected.

So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I find the idea of being driven to suicide by emails, texts, or posts online confusing and disturbing (to vastly understate).

I think of myself as relatively tech-savvy, even as I refuse to go fully mobile online.
I can use my wife's smartphone for whatever in a pinch, but I just don't feel a NEED to use gadgets like smartphones and tablets, or to constantly be connected.

If I react emotionally (in the negative sense) to something online, I physically step away from the computer and go do something else.
Because my concept of the Internet is its own activity, as opposed to reading a book, watching TV, watching a movie, spending time with friends, discussing theology or politics or nerdage, shopping, etc.

That it is possible to do any of those using the Internet has not changed my perception of those activities, and in many cases has increased my sense of differentiation between the way the Internet allows me to do them, and doing them without the Internet.

I'll watch a movie which I don't own on a free streaming service, but I don't understand the act of doing so conceptually the same way I understand taking a physical data storage medium and watching its contents on a machine which doesn't allow more than a very limited amount of input (also known as a television).

I've had some very negative interactions with people online, especially in the more anonymous sections, where a lack of real face and real name permits the worst, most cruel dregs of humanity to grab a metaphorical megaphone.
The forums in which much of this occurs predate social media, and were some of my first encounters with other people in my early days of Internet access.

Which may contribute to my perception of the Internet as something apart from myself, a communication medium first and foremost, to be accessed or NOT accessed at one's leisure.

Which seems to be the diametric opposite of today's children's experience and perception.
The prevalence of mobile Internet devices has them plugged in constantly.
Instead of forming their sense of self in day-to-day life and play and relationships THEN taking on the Internet as solid individuals (as my micro-generation and many Millennials did), they are attempting to form a sense of self in an almost entirely digital environment, in many cases neglecting the real world with its real experiences and real relationships.

This can (and too often, has) led to them being far too sensitive to the whims of the digital medium, which as I've said can be one of the most cruel environments ever devised by man.
Thus their emotional health teeters on a shaking razor's edge, which only gets worse as the hormones roll in.

Teenage self-esteem has always been unstable, at the whims of social cliques and perceived parental disappointment/abandonment.
And that was when the only influences available were REAL people they had to interact with in REAL life.
For generations it was a character-building experience that was and is vital to maturation, since the judgmental idiots and malicious elitists never really go away.

But now?
With so many children building an identity online FIRST, and their real life either barely or not catching up?
Never stepping away from the computer?
Never disconnecting?
Suddenly their self-esteem is at the whim of BILLIONS, and most of those billions are full of bile, hatred, and cruelty.