Digital Footprints

I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have

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“I plead you to be the voice for this generation of children because I know firsthand what it’s like to not have a choice in which a digital footprint you didn’t create follows you around for the rest of your life,” one 25-year-old whose childhood was monetized online told lawmakers.

When TikTok was briefly shut down last month, the app’s more than 150 million American users had the same sudden realization. The platform’s centrality to human connection was made explicit and intolerable. Billions of social ties were erased by forces unseen and beyond our control. We had built this online world only to find that it did not belong... See more

Downgrading is the radical decision to step backward in an age of dizzying, almost compulsory forward momentum. I have watched many people attempt to reduce their screen time, an agonizing process requiring constant vigilance and self-restraint. Removing the option altogether, I’ve found, is the surest way out.

It occurs to me, much later than it occurred to the archivists, that we have never possessed such a complete and damning record of our past interactions. I can tell you every college scholarship I never got. Every sale at The Gap for the past 18 years. Every flight I’ve ever taken, anywhere in the world. Most grocery lists, news alerts,... See more