There's a question I sometimes ask myself as a mother of two: what would my teenage years have looked like if everything I said had been permanently archived and searchable?

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And would this have changed the person I am today?

In some ways, this is a healthy move, a private space to be themselves without the pressure of a permanent online record. But the same privacy that protects them from public scrutiny also means their parents and guardians don’t have visibility into what their kids are sharing online, or who they’re sharing this with.

Nowadays kids know they’re being watched, and some are already actively censoring........

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