The more I think about the reaction of those students yesterday, the more I appreciate the way technology causes fundamental shifts in collective awareness. I grew up in a world where privacy was a paramount value. You had your private life and your public life, and you generally did not like them to mix.
But the ubiquity of phone-based apps and social media is gradually changing the equation. We may be approaching an age in which younger generations expect to live in metaphorical glass houses.
Where you go, what you purchase, who you are spending your time with — all of those once private aspects of life are becoming ever more available for public display.
The underlying reason for this, to put it bluntly, is that this setup is good for commerce. The more that consumers become influencers for each other, the easier it is to successfully advertise and sell things.
But that isn’t how the change is generally perceived. People don’t say “I’m doing this because it helps advertising.”
Rather, they accept it as a fundamental and pervasive shift in values. When convenience walks in the door, privacy goes out the window.