Photo: Alexandra Radford shared passwords with her boyfriend (Drew Kelly/New York Times)
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours." Words to mark a relationship rite of passage? When it comes to online password-swapping, the answer is increasingly: yes.
A new study cited by the New York Times indicates that more and more teens are marking commitment not simply by changing their relationship status, but by surrendering access to their cyber-worlds altogether.
On the one hand, it could be a trust offering, a means of fending off jealousy by letting your partner know you have nothing to hide. You're already defending your digital domain, keeping scandalous info off the Internet. Maybe it's just a matter of deciding whether you are ok revealing allll those past messages, chats and notes. Should online intimacy go hand-in-hand with physical and emotional intimacy? Are you clear on where to draw your own personal line?
On the other hand, maintaining a sense of personal identity is important in a relationship, right? Couples don't have to share everything -- and cracking open the password Pandora's box could be dangerous if your partner has a controlling streak. Just picture the worst case scenarios, if you will: a jealous significant other sending emails to exes, an unauthorized status update that you can't fix since your password changed, a message from years ago coming back to bite you. No one thinks it'll happen to them — but as some victims report, surprises do happen.