In honor of Halloween, I don’t mind telling you that there is something I find a little creepy. I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m being watched…that there are cyber-monsters lurking under my bed. I can’t see them, I can’t smell them, but I know they are there.

I grew up in the 60′s and 70′s, and I was not accustomed to being watched all the time. As kids, we made our own plans to play with our friends. We made sure it was okay with their parents, and we headed out. If we wanted to talk to someone on the phone, and we got a busy signal, we tried again later or put on our jackets and walked or biked around the block to see if our friend was home. We knocked on doors. We took our chances. We got exercise. We played Cowboys-and-Indians, Kick-the-Can, Hide-and-Go-Seek, and had Pogo-Stick and Jump-Rope marathons. Our parents weren’t breathing down our necks and following us around the neighborhood. By the time we were seven, we walked to the bus stop or to school by ourselves, and we took our time walking home from school unless we were hungry. As we got a little older, we explored the woods behind our houses, wore paths and created short-cuts. We played in the big culverts under the bridges and in the houses under construction. We expanded our universe, neighborhood by neighborhood. We learned to develop a sense of direction. We played in streams, climbed trees, and played 100 versions of “make-believe.” We were creative with a refrigerator box and an old piece of plywood. By the time we were eight, we went trick-or-treating by ourselves with our friends. No parents dared supervise us or we would have died of mortification!

We had a private life separate from school and separate from our parents. We were creators and explorers, and no one really cared where we were. Our only responsibilities were to be home in time for dinner and to do our homework. Our moms loved not having to think about us while we were occupying ourselves for those two or three hours after school. They didn’t want to have us underfoot at all times. When we didn’t have after-school lessons or team practice, our job was to get fresh air. We weren’t nagged on cell phones. Our parents weren’t constantly worried we’d go missing. Life was carefree and usually a lot more fun and exciting outside than inside. We were independent at an early age.

Was it partially because we were unencumbered by gadgets? Is it because there were no video games? The most technological things in my house were a color TV and a Hi-Fi. I remember when Hewlett Packard pocket calculators came on the scene, and this was a very big deal. These were my earliest recollection of a high-tech gadget I could use. They were very expensive. If I or my friends were lucky enough to have one, we were not permitted to bring calculators to math class. No cheating!

When I entered college, we all had calculators, but there was only one kid in the entire dorm who had a P.C. in his room. It was no more than a word processor, but everyone who gazed upon this oddity gazed with reverence, as if it were the monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Almost no one I knew had any experience with computers save for punch cards. It is as if we were living in the Dark Ages by today’s standards. There was no such thing as a laptop to hide behind in class. We took notes by hand. We typed our own papers on our typewriters, or we paid someone to type them for us. If we needed information, we went to the library and spent hours rifling through card catalogues. If we wanted to meet with friends, we planned ahead when we saw each other, or we left notes under each other’s doors. There was no desire to be in constant communication with each other. If we called each other as often as today’s kids talk, text, and chat, we would have been labeled as neurotically clinging, needy, obsessive, compulsive, and disturbed!

I often wonder what it would have been like to have today’s technologies available to me while I was in school. No doubt, I could have learned more and learned it faster. While I am in awe of technological advances and love the way they make my life easier, social interactions between children are monitored so closely, I’m wondering if faster access to information has replaced creativity and a sense of independence. And is that a good thing?

It is no wonder parents today love giving their kids cell phones. It’s their own personal tracking device. You may ask what’s next? Implants? Yes! In a recent CNN poll asking parents if they would consider implanting in their children a tiny tracking device called a VeriChip (a device for security and tracking applications made by Applied Digital Solutions that is currently implanted on pets and some humans), 76% of Americans thought it would be an invasion of privacy, while 24% would consider it for security reasons. While the rate of child abduction is exactly as it was 40 years ago, the fear of abduction has grown tremendously over the years. It is interesting that adults today worry disproportionately about kidnapping, but don’t worry as much as they ought to about their privacy. Is it that they themselves have been so closely supervised their entire lives because of a fear of kidnapping that they never had much privacy to begin with? How can you miss something you never had? If “play dates” are micro-managed by adults, and kids are always driven to and from their friends’ houses, when does a child have any moment when he is truly by himself? These kids don’t have an opportunity to explore their neighborhoods, to discover their secrets, or to develop that sense of being truly alone in their own tiny adventure. As they grow older, a tween’s and teenager’s social life is made possible in large part due to internet and satellite technology, and that social life often takes place inside a computer monitor or a smart phone. To young people, these technologies are themselves a world of adventure, and appear purely wonderful and full of opportunity.

October 29th marked the 40th anniversary of the internet. Forty years ago, the internet was an intercollegiate networking forum for scientific information-sharing. Very few people had heard of the internet even 20 years ago, let alone used it. Today, it is remarkable how much information is at our fingertips. The internet has replaced trips to the library, trips to the movies, the need to tape TV shows, the need for a phone book, the need for encyclopedias, and now many books themselves. For better or for worse, everyone who uses the internet is connected to everyone else.

What is the downside? The profound amount of available information and the plethora of online gaming opportunities cause many people to become glued to their monitors for hours on end to the detriment of other activities. Addiction to social networks and its lure of interconnectedness is directly related to the obesity epidemic in our society and the sedentary lifestyle many of us now lead. A recent study on obesity blames our sedentary lifestyle for an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. Ironically, while we now live in a world where information doesn’t die, our addiction to that very world may be leading to our own shortened life spans. As a matter of fact, according to a recent report on CBS, the youngest generation living today may be the first in American history to not outlive their parents’ generation. But take heart: Everything you and others post on the internet is probably located on a web of servers. Anything ever written by you or about you is preserved on “Google.” So you will live forever in cyberspace.

Online security continues to be a problem. Hackers can access your personal data. Liars and hoaxsters can post falsehoods about you, and law enforcement might arrest you based on a hoax, incorrect information, or an online typo. It happens.

This interest in us has been around for far longer than The Patriot Act has been a law. For many years, internet tracking companies have honed and improved their ability to gather information about your online interests so they can discern your tastes, your values, your aesthetic preferences, and your shopping habits. If you purchase “The Communist Manifesto” for your Kindle, chances are there are entities beside the FBI and CIA which are interested in that information. There are surely at least three book sellers who may send you ads and coupons for biographies on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

According to NPR in a report on October 29th, as part of a series they did on internet privacy, even the ACLU may be conceding that protecting privacy on the internet is a lost cause. Our laws are far behind the times in protecting online information, documents, and photos, and there is no telling when laws will catch up with the times, or if they even will be able to do so.

What can you do to protect yourself? Be defensive in all online communications. Whenever you post anything on a public site, consider the possibility that anyone in the world may be able to access that information. The internet is certainly not viewed by most people as a feeding frenzy of lurking monsters under the bed, fraught with hackers and organizations feeding off of cyber-explorations like werewolves and vampires. But it might not be a bad idea to keep this image in the back of your mind.

People who are most likely to have learned to be defensive in all online communication have been hurt by hackers’ access to their information, or have been arrested unjustly because someone created a hoax by posting online a crime the accused did not commit. They have learned to realize there is little intimacy, and to consider that all communications, even if they seem to be intimate, may have a much wider audience. If you post your birthday, your children’s names, your hometown, and your alma mater, you have already given hackers a huge advantage in hacking more personal information about you, including credit card numbers.

In our digital world, our youth enjoy exhibitionism to a degree most adults would find irresponsible. But as more and more adults become accustomed to public online forums, their own sensibilities about privacy become more relaxed. A study has been conducted suggesting the more informal and “cheesy” a website appears, the more likely people are to divulge personal information about themselves, while a more serious-looking website elicits a more guarded response to the same query. So, it should be no surprise that data miners glean all sorts of information about bloggers’ likes and dislikes from informal social sites which is later used by pollsters, economists, and advertisers.

It should also not be surprising that for years, our personal finances and a lot of our health information has been digitized for posterity. It really does not pay to lie about any of it on an application for a loan or health insurance. If you lie, in short order, your lies will be discovered.

It makes me laugh when I see viral reactionary e-mails regarding irrational fears about a government-run healthcare system ‘suddenly’ knowing all of our personal health issues and personal finances, as if the government lacked this information previously. If you have ever submitted a health insurance claim in the past, be assured that your health issue and treatment procedures are logged on servers somewhere in the governmental labyrinth. If you ever paid your taxes, the government already knows your claimed income.

Health insurance companies have been computerized for years. If you have a pre-existing condition for which you used health insurance, every insurance company has access to that information. And yet, knowledge about your health issues is not yet in a national network for healthcare delivery. While there has been some resistance to this idea among some Americans who feel this might be an invasion of privacy, I agree with healthcare providers who think it would be a great idea to create that kind of network. What if you get hurt and are unable to speak? What if you are away from your local healthcare facility and health records? Would it not be helpful if doctors and nurses could quickly access your health records to learn about your health issues and possible allergies before administering care? Absolutely yes. Privacy be damned. Your health is at stake in an emergency.

We live in the age of satellites, where your GPS-enabled cell phone permits friends and family to track your exact location with incredible accuracy. There are parents who stealthily activate this feature on their kids’ cell phones without their kids’ knowledge so they can monitor their children’s whereabouts. Sneaky, right? Big Mother and Big Father are watching. If your cell phone is turned on, government authorities can find you if you are on their “Most Wanted” list. But in an emergency, if you get covered in an avalanche or if your car goes off the road, this same technology can save you. In this case, lack of privacy is an advantage. Furthermore, if you use an Easy-Pass, it is easy to monitor where you are traveling if you use toll roads. If you have something to hide, that could be a problem for you. If you need an alibi, however, it could be helpful.

So, in this post-privacy world, where online trackers can monitor the websites I frequent and where e-mail servers save every single communication I have ever sent, I know I’m being watched. Some people feel personally invaded by this intrusion, while many don’t give it a second thought. I prefer to weigh the pros and cons. It is a bit unsettling knowing that every single rant I have ever written is saved for posterity on a server somewhere. There are probably dozens of organizations who are gleaning information about me every moment I’m online. And yet young people think nothing of this. After all, if you have nothing to hide, why should it matter?

Perhaps there is a false sense of anonymity and safety I can cling to in the sheer volume of terabytes of information Big Brother has to store about me and the rest of society. And while there is a new program in development called “Vanish” which can limit the lifespan of information put online, it is not simple to use nor readily available at this time. Moreover, can we trust that it would really work?

On those dark and stormy nights, when I worry whether Big Brother, Big Company, and Big Data Miner are watching me, like an old portrait with moving eyeballs following me around the haunted mansion, I am certain I can find a young kid to comfort me and tell me it’s all in my imagination. After all, there are no scary monsters under my bed watching me. Are there?