Jake: About a boy

Class of his own

This week, a video popped up on my Facebook that someone else had liked, and I haven’t really been able to stop worrying about it since. It was a boy who could not have been much older than 13, doing cringey lip syncing and pouting to a camera.

Now this clearly isn’t aimed at me, but should we really indulge such exposing behaviour like this? In terms of things kids do on the internet that they’ll later regret, this is fairly light-hearted small fry, but serious stuff happens out there as a result of children being encouraged to express themselves at all costs via their computers.

I’m just about young enough to have naïvely made the odd angry comment or tweet during my teens that I’d be mortified to associate myself with now, but these days it’s a different ball game. 

Educational steps are being taken to tackle the really grizzly stuff, but is it made clear enough that any embarrassing video of you gurning to a Drake song with your top off will be there forever unless you can remember your YouTube password from when you were 12? 

If not, the 2020s will surely be forever known as “The awkward job interviews decade”.