[dangrossman]

The assumption that this "freedom" remain available in the future is what I challenged, not a social obligation not to avail yourself of it. It may become technically or legally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in the future. If you give your child a unique name, and the ability to operate under a different name is not available, then you've guaranteed their activity (childhood or otherwise) is easily cataloged and searchable.

[ngpio]

> And if it becomes technically or illegally impossible to operate under a pseudonym or to change your legal name in 10 years? That this won't happen is the assumption I challenged, not some social obligation not to choose to use a pseudonym.

Then we should work to make that future unlikely. Even if things come to be as you describe, we should build in strict social/technical safeguards of (at the very least) pseudonymity until we much better understand the development the human mind.

[edit in response to your edited post] It seems we're pretty much in agreement, just coming at the issue from different points of devil's advocacy.

[dangrossman]

One of the social safeguards for preserving pseudonymity (your advice) in the face of a future you cannot control is giving your child a common name, so that their activity cannot easily be discerned from that of many others. As hard as you work, you may not be able to prevent future technical and legal changes from occurring.

[ngpio]

> One of the social safeguards for preserving pseudonymity (your advice) in the face of a future you cannot control is giving your child a common name, so that their activity cannot easily be discerned from that of many others.

I agree. I'm very grateful to have a common name. Nate Perkins is about as generic as it gets. Global searches for my name come up with a variety of people completely unrelated to me.

Still, there are potential downsides. For instance, searching for "[my name] [my city]" brings up a mugshot of someone who isn't me. And of course, Stephen Law of the original post has a much more frustrating issue.

None of us are really in a position to say with certainty "it's better to have a common name than an uncommon one" or vice versa.

I would argue that pseudonymity is necessary to overcome negative situations arising from having a common name or having an uncommon name. But this argument is strictly from my own experience and should be taken as such.

Like most things, it comes down to the importance of teaching kids to think critically about how their choices will affect themselves and their environment rather than accepting truisms not backed by relevant statistics.