Ryan Benjamin |Being OK with Big Brother

Forget the fine print. Anyone who's been paying attention to the latest Facebook "crisis" - in which the site's terms of service removed the users' right to their own content after deleting their accounts, and then reneged - must realize that no matter what the words say, Facebook will always have access to our content.

This should not come as a shock. Everyone knows that whatever we do on the Internet remains there forever. When you search for something on Google, your information passes through "server farms" located in the most random places - like Lenoir, N.C. - and stays there.

Incidentally, I wasn't even aware of this Facebook "scandal" until after it ended, when my mom, of all people, asked me if I had heard about it.

So where is the uproar? There isn't much, and it's telling that even though Facebook has 175 million active users worldwide, only 75,000 have joined the Mark Zuckerberg-operated "Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" group (though it's growing fairly rapidly). These "privacy" issues aren't problems to us, and while adults may view this as indifference, our ability to adapt with each newly lowered privacy barrier is actually a generational strength.

We have become so accustomed - okay, "indifferent" - to rapidfire change because change itself is the norm.

When in 2006 Facebook implemented News Feed - which allows users to see what their friends have recently done on the site - users were extremely upset about the loss of privacy regarding breakups, make ups and "it's complicated"s. Fast forward a few years: We love News Feed and aren't as shocked now when Facebook gets a little more invasive. Sooner or later, we'll get over this latest hullabaloo.

Computers - and people - watch us constantly. Penn touts the fact that 86 CCTV cameras and approximately 500 fixed ones surround campus. And even though this invasion of privacy might seem like a travesty, the truth is that it probably doesn't bother that many of us. We're not the Baby Boomers, who grew up in an era when the FBI tapped phones and a president resigned because some of his operatives tried to burglarize the opposing party's headquarters.

And new innovations threaten to push the envelope even further. Google recently unveiled a program called Latitude, which allows users to track where their friends are at any given time to, say, meet up with them at a local bar if they're a few blocks away. To some it sounds crazy, but to most of us it sounds exciting (except maybe the small faction of hardcore Libertarians).

Although by now we're accustomed to losing privacy, we might actually get some back. Computer scientists are busy at work for the Stanford Clean Slate Program, literally a "new" Internet with better security and newer applications. The idea is that the privacy of the current Internet has been compromised to such an extent that it is time for something new. Users might have to sign in with a personal ID number, much like that of a driver's license, to be able to access the network - which is scheduled to operate at eight college campuses by the summer. And even if that might seem excessive, the ironic part is that we'll adapt just as quickly as we do now.

Some observers have called us Generation Apathetic. For the good and the bad, we probably are. We don't protest wars, and we don't question as much as we could. There are notable exceptions to the apathetic argument, some might say, like the 2008 election, when record numbers of young people voted for the first time.

The bottom line is that if we're apathetic, we're not as careful when we use the Internet, which can hurt us. Perhaps, but the more important by-product is that we have options in the ways of communicating and gathering information.

Just because we use Wikipedia doesn't mean we don't know how to open an encyclopedia. We were in elementary school when the Internet first blossomed, so we've grown up alongside technological innovation and change. We're immersed in change and well-versed in the new, so instead of apathetic, a better label would be Generation Adaptability.

Ryan Benjamin is a College senior from New Haven, Conn. A Connecticut Yankee appears on Fridays. His email address is benjamin@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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