by Sam Nelson (bio)
A few weeks ago I was sitting at home bored and typed my name into YouTube to look for old videos my brothers and I posted when I was in high school. To my surprise, I scrolled down and saw a thumbnail of me singing and dancing with a microphone in my hand! It was a video of me rapping about modesty to the tune of Sir-Mix-A-Lot's I Like Big Butts for my EFY talent show. Apparently some girl with a camera on her phone filmed it and posted it years ago. Over 30,000 people have viewed the video... and I didn’t even know it was out there!
Fortunately for me, the video isn’t too embarrassing, even though it exposes my weirdness as a teenager. It got me thinking about the long-term implications of increased technology, though. Nowadays, filming something and putting it on YouTube is as easy as taking out your phone, pressing a button to film, then pressing another to post.
I predict that this will become an issue as my generation grows up and incorporates into the adult world. How weird would it be to see a video of your young women’s president Jello wrestling at a BYU frat party? Or a video surfacing of your bishop taking a bong hit when he was a teenager? Your wife (or mom) making out with some greasy skateboarder in high school? Will things like this impact you when you are a boss? A doctor? An elementary school teacher? It causes problems today, but I predict that when today’s carefree younger generation grows up, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media permanently floating around cyberspace are going to become extremely irritating. What do you think?
