How much about your online life do your family & friends know?

[GlitchWolf47]

I share my online site with anyone who asks about it.

most of my friends know and think its cool, my family knows (my parents think its 'cute' -_-) and some of my teachers and random people I know know about it

I dont try and keep it a secret by any means, but Im not always rambling about it either. I kinda just chill there.

[fablefound]

my online and personal lives are quite fused and tangled in some pretty complicated ways, owing to a number of reasons (most of them quite depressing) but honestly the end result is quite wonderful.
three of my best friends live here. the other three live in california. we are all best friends with each other, and all met up irl for the first time during the holidays a couple years back.
i'm in a band with several people i've never met irl--and one i finally met irl back in june of last year. i have irls who know about this band and enjoy its work. (it's also quite hard for me to separate my artist stuff into online and off because both local and digital scenes have contributed so much to my development as a creative...)
my parents know my internet friends about as well as my irl friends--which is to say, they make an effort and can recognize some names lol.

[RNotteLovesOwls]

for my sake, no one in my family (except for my brother, and one of my cousins who is a trans woman) gets to know about my online life. i am very openly "cutesy girl mode" whenever i'm online, around the aforementioned cousin, or in downtown/uptown. and my parents never need to know about this; i'm not a child anymore, so whatever i do on the web is none of their business. at the very least, i can show them my website that showcases my work, but that's as far as i'm willing to go

it's funny. back in the 2000s, when i was a kid, we all had facebook accounts, and i was less worried about sharing pictures of myself. but now that i'm a young adult and know about big tech's crap, i care very much about my online privacy. suffice it to say, never will i be going back to facebook to follow the family again

[MrsMoe]

They know jack shit about it and I hope to keep it that way.

If they saw any of the stuff I say on any of my socials, they'd either accuse me of hating them or being a "leftist extremist". I honestly don't know which would be worse...

[TheFrugalGamer]

They know jack shit about it and I hope to keep it that way.

If they saw any of the stuff I say on any of my socials, they'd either accuse me of hating them or being a "leftist extremist". I honestly don't know which would be worse...

How dare you have your beliefs AT them!!! </sarcasm>

I'm a little bit further along in age and live on my own, so I don't have to separate my online/offline life as much if I don't want to. I'm sorry so many of you have to deal with that--it does get better eventually!

I usually tell the folks around me about the fact that I put my hobbies online, and I will sometimes show them my site once or so. I've found most of them usually don't spend time on it, which is fine with me, and I don't want to hound them or be annoying about it. Part of the reason I have my site is so that I can have an outlet for my creative side, without having to talk endlessly to the people around me who probably don't care about my art as much as I do   

[sunnyp4rk]

I've shown some family members my old website (not my current ones), and I know my mom follows my art tumblr blog on her old account she never logs into...but anything they know about me, its what I've decided to tell them. Which tends to be a lot.

[AntEater]

I personally like having people who know me not know my body.
Due to a old school and some "great" experiences I've had there I feel anxious if I interact with someone in person and they know who I am. I find it way easier to express who I am online but when I am unable to maintain that personality when I am put face to face with someone, I feel like a fraud.
So I usually only let a few very close friends know who my physical shell is, any more and I don't think I'd feel safe to express myself online either :P

[brennan]

I think I'm a weird case where I'm totally public and there's no anonymity or separation of identity for me. Makes things easier for me, personally, since I never have to worry about someone finding out. But I absolutely believe people have the right to full and total anonymity and privacy!

[infinitysnapz]

my family know vaguely about what I do online, and know that I'm into video editing and music and am a generally creature of the internet
they don't seem to actively follow me anywhere, because they're mainly wrapped up in their own lives. so i don't need to worry about that sort of thing..

my big worry is theoretical future employers/freelance clients lol. i do struggle to keep my IRL life and my Online life separate, given that I Like Making Things, and that's a huge part of my overall personality.. i'm not hiding myself because of some mythical soulless business husk, but sometimes that (somewhat irrational) worry gets the better of me. i sometimes debate for the need for a "professional" online presence to exist alongside my current one, because i'm too "weird" lol. if it weren't for all that, i'd probably have a furry creature of some kind as my general profile picture by now.

[Offline]

The online world is like a different person when it comes to what I put out there. Different people know different things about me. There are some things multiple people know and some things nobody knows about me. But I generally try to keep my online and offline life as separate as possible I do have a friend or two that know about one or two of my accounts on occasion what I post on there but it's very little if anything at all aside for that and I'd like to keep that way. They don't need to know about all of the thoughts I post online.
 

[Offline]

my family has never been close whatsoever, we were always just strangers related by blood who lived under the same roof.

Man, I can relate to that. I was never close with anyone in my family except my sister and they never gave me a good reason to be with how my parents acted when I was living with them. I love my sister more than anything but even she doesn't anything about my online life beyond one account that I don't use much at all.

[candycanearter07]

Man, I can relate to that. I was never close with anyone in my family except my sister and they never gave me a good reason to be with how my parents acted when I was living with them. I love my sister more than anything but even she doesn't anything about my online life beyond one account that I don't use much at all.

Same, I feel really distant to my family since we almost never do anything together and have pretty different interests. It always feels like everyone else is always busy (and my sister left home last year) so I'm pretty much just by myself most of the time... It doesn't help that my mom is the complete opposite of me when it comes to interests and doesn't like any kind of tech stuff happening while she's in the room which sucks since I barely get to talk to my dad about technology stuff

my family know vaguely about what I do online, and know that I'm into video editing and music and am a generally creature of the internet
they don't seem to actively follow me anywhere, because they're mainly wrapped up in their own lives. so i don't need to worry about that sort of thing..

Yeah, exactly. I know my brother knows about my discord account (has me friended and also is why my username is so freaking long :P), and my dad follows me on Bluesky, but overall I try to keep them very far from what I do online since as stated above, they have completely different interests and wouldn't understand all the stuff I do, and also I'm a tiny bit embarrassed. I tend to sometimes get ranty about my numerous interests, like Phoenix Wright or Balatro, so I wanted to keep it a bit far away from them. At the very least, I have other people on the forum to talk to about my numerous interests.

[pepper]

My old reddit account is mostly just cringe stuff best left behind on a dead pseudo-anonymous account that has no connection to any other actual online identity. Other than that, I don't mind if anyone IRL knows anything I post online.

My "mildlypepper" accounts are all relatively fresh, I think around five or six years? I don't post anything scandalous on my site or my social media accounts, if I did I would appropriately tag/ spoiler/ otherwise indicate the NSFW nature of said content and not feel any shame over it (my site is labelled as 'intended for 18+' just in case, but again I don't post NSFW anyways), and any intense or nerdy interests I have I'm actually quite proud of tyvm.

I don't mind if anyone out there, prospective or current employers or whatever, know I'm a furry or that I'm on occasion completely unhinged about a certain anime catboy in a critically acclaimed mmorpg. I spent WAY too long in denial and then in the closet about being trans and demi/bisexual, I am completely over hiding anything about myself from anyone.

So any friends, employers, coworkers, are free to check out my site, in fact I won't shut up about it to some folks, and from there they can freely see all my social media, or even this account. Not that I really expect most people to go digging this far, but even if they did, again, I'm proud of what I post online. The other direction I'm more careful about for obvious reasons. Like I will sometimes mention what field my job is in or what metro area I live in, but beyond that I don't share PII about myself online mostly due to various site rules and general safety and not due to any sort of desire to keep my online and IRL identities seperate. They're the same person, who I am right now is just me, I'm the same Pepper at work talking with my boss as I am here making this post 

i sometimes debate for the need for a "professional" online presence to exist alongside my current one, because i'm too "weird" lol. if it weren't for all that, i'd probably have a furry creature of some kind as my general profile picture by now.

This is so funny to me because my avatar on Microsoft Teams at work is the same as my avatar here and it's just my fursona    LOL like when I join a meeting and I'm just using voice my name shows up with my fursona lighting up as I talk idgaf I've been mask off Weird and unabashed neurodivergent at work more and more lately and it's so liberating 

Now everything above said, my family is a different situation, I haven't spoken to most of my family in years (most of them are bad people), and it's been a year since I last spoke to my parents (they can't accept that I'm trans but they'll support my violent and racist brother and that's all I'll say bc forum rules). I would be more confused than anything if my brother suddenly started following my furry instagram account lol

[koiitan]

Well, my family (except for my brother) doesn't know much as they just don't sit much on internet. My friends mostly know about my online stuff, but I'm pretty nervous when sharing it to them, I like to be more creative with expressing myself on the internet, be more myself, but I still have to try to be more open also for my friends. I trust them, I know they wouldn't judge me, or they wouldn't try to stop talking to me, but I still have a bit of fear something like this would happen.
But I did show my website to them and I occasionally ask for advice if it looks good, and they support me at continuing making it, so I really don't know why should I be scared. I'm very glad to have them. 

Still, they don't know much where I post art, it's a longer topic about art school and such, I'm not scared of a casual critic but the thought of possibly being laughed at is making me hesitant to ever show them my sketches or anything.

[Bede]

My mantra with my very religious immediate family wanting to know about my online life is more or less that one John Mulaney bit: "Not unless everyone gets real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly."

The single time I ever shared a bit of my online presence with a member of my family (I showed an art post to my aunt briefly so I could show her a recent piece), I was then immediately (accidentally) outed to my, again, very religious, parents. (She went to follow the account since she remembered my username, saw my bio, and then called my mom asking, "What does 'enby' mean?") She has since profusely apologized to me, and I understand that she genuinely didn't know, but I have, nonetheless, now learned my lesson on that front.

To that end, I was initially was going to make my transition name my online alias that I've had since before I realized I was trans, but I've recently decided to do something completely different. It's important to me that my online privacy be protected, and that I'm able to exist in real life without employers, my family, and other authority figures being able to ask, "When you posted 'I love toxic gay cookies' on the 10th of January 2026, what did you mean by that?"

My friends are a different story. I freely give out my art socials to my friends, and I give my personal socials and personal website to the ones I'm especially close to. That's because, everything I talk about online, I already talk about to all my close irl friends, anyways (things like fandom, social issues, etc).