Narratives - Digital Safety

Chung-Hee Kim, C-H to his friends, likes to think of himself as a “normal” American teenager. He lives in a modest town in a suburb of a large midwestern city. He’s a freshman at the local high school.

His parents are nice, quiet, but a bit square. They don’t “get” him, and they really don’t get the whole online thing, but they’re OK. More important, they don’t get in the way, especially when it comes to using the computer in his bedroom.

When he’s not in school or hanging out with his friends, C-H spends most of his free time online. He’s got a MySpace page that he keeps up to date with the latest features: his favorite music plays when a visitor hits the page, they’re met with pictures of his favorite movie actresses, and his friends have posted a long list of comments every time he makes a move. He’s got a Facebook account, but fewer of his friends are on there, so he goes back only once or twice a week to look something up or check out the Wall on his page. He tries out every new service that’s hot before most of his friends do.

Mostly, Chung-Hee is into Second Life. He’s got an avatar he calls “VirtualC-H” – a young, dashing, twenty-first-century knight, who zips around in a partial suit of body armor. When he was visiting his cousins in South Korea last summer, he played around on CyWorld, and he’s had an account on There.com. Most of his friends are into World of Warcraft. But Second Life is where it’s at for C-H.

For hours every afternoon, he dives into a parallel life. His friends from school are not into Second Life as much, so he mostly chats with people he comes across in public spaces he doesn’t otherwise know. Since C-H thinks he’d like to become an architect, he hangs around with other Second Life users who build things. In Second Life, he’s constructed a post-modern home for his avatar that’s earned him a reputation as a budding talent. He’s participated in group efforts to design and build edgy-looking bridges, roads, and towers.

Today, C-H is online, as usual, in the late afternoon. The sun’s gone down, but C-H hasn’t bothered yet to turn on the lights in his bedroom. His PC throws off a blue-ish light.

He’s got a few IM windows open, chatting here and there with a few friends from the high school – mostly idle banter about who’s hot, who’s going to the freshman dance with whom, the usual. Mainly, though, he’s focused on his open web browser, where he’s in an IRC chat. He found this chat by following a few people he met through his interest in architecture. The chat is invite-only, but it turned out not to be hard to work an invite for C-H because of his design skills demonstrated in Second Life.

Most of the participants in the chat seemed to be different than the Second Life crowd. After a few witty exchanges, a participant named designboy said, “hey C-H, are you on IM? Find me at dboy1239 on [take your pick].”

Without much thought, C-H took his pick of instant messaging services – two were already opened – and sent an instant invite to dboy1239 to become his buddy. A moment later, C-H and dboy1239 had a one-on-one chat going while both continued to participate in the group IRC conversation. They got on well. C-H smiled as he signed off to head to dinner: “c u l8r, designboy.” “U2!” came the reply, and C-H shut the lid on his laptop.

Designboy and C-H became fast friends online. Designboy told C-H he lived in New York City, but that he had relatives who lived in Chicago, not far from C-H’s town. He hoped to visit them that summer, after school let out. He hoped he might get to meet C-H then. C-H said that’d be great.

In June, C-H got an e-mail from Designboy with his travel itinerary attached – showing an economy-class ticket from LaGuardia to O’Hare. “Did you get my flight info? I’d like to meet you in person. Let’s meet up when I’m in Chicago,” Designboy IMed later that day. “When’s good for you?” C-H pinged back a quick “sure, sounds good.”

But he wasn’t so sure it sounded good. He wanted to meet Designboy – they’d had a great conversation for six months running online, and his friend clearly knew his stuff when it came to architecture – but C-H was shy and he didn’t know if they’d get along in person as well as they had online. He’d have to think it through.