My brother, at age 13, as finally started to join the digital life with his first personal email account. This might seem a stupid simple step which doesn't mean much. In today's world digital life is expected. Babies have a digital life (due to their parents uploading pictures), that will travel with them all their lives. However, it is creating the first digital life, the person that you are online, which seems so significate.
An Email account is the first step in a very deep hole. Facebook, twitter, blogging, and who knows what else, becomes almost as important as life itself. Pictures which seem funny at 13, will look horrible and might be detrimental at 18 when your hoping to go to college. Life online has a weird powerful implications into our regular lives. Once you start to be plugged in, its nearly impossible to be unpluged.
My brother's excitement is understandable. I'm sure at 13 an email address seems like the first step in becoming a grown up. When I was 13, I wanted to start working so I could make money (and buy things that I wanted). I didn't even think about an email address till near the end of high school, when it became necessary. I wonder how my parents, who still aren't very plugged in (dsl, cellphones (not smart phones) and my mum never used FB are as close as they get), are going to teach my brother about building his online character. And who can tell what that online personality will mean by the time he's my age and out in the 'real' world.
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