Everything on the internet is forever

What worries me about the marketing trend of content moving to video is longevity. Not talking about longevity as in “is this content vehicle going to have staying power.” I worry about a scenario when a teen creates a video doing something questionable (however you define it) and that video is still around when the teen has outgrown that phase. What will happen when these kids become adults and are job hunting or running for political office? Will the TikTok video they made when they were 12 still haunt them? The truth is that there is a chance that everything on the internet can live on forever. I consider myself lucky that social media was not a part of daily life when I was a child. I didn’t get a facebook account until I was a freshman in college and even then I had a healthy dose of anxiety of putting pictures of myself online, even for friends. I cannot imagine the pressure kids nowadays feel and I live in true fear thinking about what my own children will do when they inevitably go online themselves (they do have an online presence now because of me which I have thought long and hard about, but that is another topic). When I read stories about the Hype House I can’t help feeling horrified: where are the parents of these kids who are living there, are they aware that the choices they are making today could have lasting effect, where is legal, what’s the end goal? With all this time spent creating influencer content, how will this translate when they go to apply for college or a job? At the risk of sounding like a very old person (which, I suppose to these kids I am), I worry about their futures and wonder what is going through their minds and their parents’ minds.