Fewer Close Kept Secrets and Less Room for Doubt

Rumors and the juvenile urge to acknowledge private matters to less than trustworthy peers has been a well-observed adolescent phenomenon. But today that phenomenon has crashed head on into one of the digital age’s commonly spoken proverbs: What happens on the internet stays on the internet.

Philip and his friend Vienna had suffered personal violation on formspring only a handful of days earlier. Philip and Vienna recovered well and they recovered quickly. Erica suffered a much greater violation—one to her personal privacy—and it is unlikely she will recover so quickly, so easily or so completely.

Initially, Erica’s peers probably paid little attention to the increasing banter on Erica’s formspring account asking her, “Is it true you are no longer a virgin?” Teenage girls get asked no shortage of rude and personal questions in this venue. The virgin question was tame by comparison. But then one day it seems that Erica caved into mounting social pressure she was getting online and offline to confirm the rumors.

“I regret it, but yeah,” was her first response to confirm the rumors. It was followed by multiple affirmative responses as if she was cleaning out a backlog of questions on her formspring queue that she had left unanswered for a while. At first one might have concluded that Erica’s older sister was playing a prank. But time proved otherwise. Erica never erased her answers. Instead on the following day, she began to answer a next wave of questions that pressed for details. It did not take much intelligence to understand the basics of what had happened.

Erica had indeed relinquished her virginity. Since this was a hookup and not a long term boyfriend, the guy had little motivation to keep Erica’s secret. He probably bragged at least to his closest friends. As the extremely popular girl, Erica would be a prize in the eyes of most high school guys who merely got the opportunity to spend a little time kissing her. Erica’s first time would be the prize of all prizes. He told some friends, at least one of them leaked the story to others and then the rumors spread like fire.

Eventually the direct questions and the ones written to her on formspring reached critical mass and Erica felt compelled to answer. Erica claims it was voluntary, even through she regrets it. As a parent, I wonder whether or not she was knowingly or unknowingly under the influence of Ecstasy or another illegal substance that would make her uncharacteristically agreeable to sex. The thought makes me cringe. That level of detail was not disclosed. So far, Erica has also resisted the many formspring questions that directly ask her with whom she shared her first time. Again I cringe at the likely scenario that it was someone much older and possibly even someone above the age for which state laws would make this a statutory rape. Erica at age fourteen was very, very young.

When I was in high school, I would catch rumors of girls relinquishing their virginity. Sometimes these rumors came with details and sometimes they did not. It was often with a much older guy. As I got older, more and more of the guys I knew would recite both vague and detailed stories of their supposed first experience, best experience or most recent experience. But the girl in question was never named to me. And no girl ever admitted or shared the details of her first experience with me. An admission like Erica’s highly public and highly authenticated admission on formspring is unique to this generation, but it is probably all of the sudden quite common.

With room for doubt only left regarding the minor details Erica still withholds, the rumors will continue while the main facts can no longer be denied. What happens on the internet stays on the internet. And what stays on the internet affects the offline world. It will no doubt affect Erica’s offline world. But what happens to Erica in the real world is a story that deserves its own post.