I got a text from my friend the other day. It said ‘Hey Squiggs, wanna meet up later and see a film?’ That’s my nickname; Squiggs, or Squiggle depending on what takes your fancy.
 
Around 70% of Britain’s teenagers have at least one nickname. No one can say they don’t have at least one. They’re everywhere these days. Friends, MSN, MySpace, Facebook, Online Forums, even parents use them sometimes. Most teenagers, however, don’t choose their personal nicknames themselves so are they happy with them? 17-year-old indie kid Anthony, whose nickname is Donkey said "Even though my nickname sounds quite silly, I actually chose it myself. It's not about looks, I just made it up. It's not rude to me at all."

Depending on if your nickname is a shortened version of your real name or something completely different, affects who uses it. Most teenagers call their friends by their nickname, but I spoke to one parent who said that she would never call her daughter by her nickname. She felt it would be degrading and would take away the meaning of having a real name. Thinking about it, most parents probably feel that way because they're the ones who gave their children their names – obviously for a reason.
 
It’s a well-known fact that your real name, the name that makes you, is on your birth certificate. That’s obvious, but an online nickname is completely different. They can be about anything and anyone can make them up. With the Internet becoming a playground for people adopting false identities, some may argue that it’s safer to make up nicknames on the Internet to protect your identity. Others however, disagree. 17-year-old Fall Out Boy fan Mica, is a regular on MySpace and fan forums. She feels that “Online nicknames don't really make a difference at all, it’s the same as when you’re talking to someone face to face.” The people I asked about online nicknames mostly felt that it's part of life to have an online nickname and hardly anyone uses their real name unless they know the person they are talking to, or they put it in their profiles.

With online communities like myspace getting more and more popular, not only do you choose to put your nickname but you put your interests, hobbies, favourite films and TV shows, who you'd like to meet and what you are like. So do different nicknames create different personalities? 15-year-old 'internet geek' Adam – his words, not mine – thinks this is untrue. "Personally, I think that places like MySpace don't create different personalities and identities, but sometimes if you have a certain nickname that displays certain behaviour, people you don't know could get the wrong idea."

I, for one, am on MySpace and many Internet forums with different online nicknames. They're fun places to be – you can meet new people, chat about what you all have in common and the different things you like, current affairs, you can even talk about absolute rubbish. You may even have spoken to me online, but I suppose you'll never really know for sure.

If you ever do speak to me though, would you call me Jade or Squiggs?