How can you ever really be sure that your opinions and your ideas are your own? What I’m talking about is something that has crept into all of our lives at some time or another.

Avril Lavigne fan? Didn’t think so. But, remember some time ago when Avril was sued because her song “Girlfriend” sounded a whole lot like the Rubinoo’s “I Wanna be Your Boyfriend?” Or what about that Harvard student who wrote a book to critical acclaim, that turned out to have been written some time before by another author, one whom the student had read and enjoyed?

Can we admonish these creative individuals, making the assumption that they knowingly plagiarized the work of others? Well, for the person who first came up with the idea, the “borrowing” of his or her creation is no small matter.

Now, we all have at least a basic understanding of the concept that most everything we come up with comes from the things we experience in our lives. True, we mix them up and mold them in new ways, but in the end, we can all agree, that we start with external inspiration of some kind.

How are we to know when inspiration has crossed the line into plagiarism? When can we ever be sure that our brainchildren have not been adopted from others?

There is a popular concept in psychology that refers specifically to this type of “idea recycling,” or unintentional plagiarism. It is often brought up when doctoral candidates are preparing their theses and cannot remember the source of some information which they deem necessary to include. So convinced are they that the information cannot be found anywhere but in their heads, that it becomes common knowledge for them – information that they are comfortable claiming as of their own creation, without citation.

When we look at all the books that have been published, all the screenplays that have been written, the songs that have been sung and the music that has been played, can we honestly believe that none have ever been repeated less than accidentally?

Surely, authors have repackaged the words of others and gotten away with it. With all those fake-memoir, formerly Oprah-loved novelists running around, there have to be others who have traveled along the fuzzy lines of re-creation and convinced themselves that they had been original.

But when it comes to our ideas, most would like to believe that they are solely our own. Yet, is it merely a coincidence that many young people share the political opinions of their parents or that certain miracle diet plans keep returning to us in new books with new-fangled titles? We would like to believe that we come up with our own stuff. We would like to believe that we are all completely original.So, what are we to do about this universal problem? If you’re good, like photographic-memory and writing-down-everything-that-happens-in-your-life good, then you are probably all set.

But for those of us who have failed to catalog every bit of environmental stimuli that has come our way in the last two decades that we’ve been on this Earth, we need some other way. Hence Facebook, e-mail and blogs. Perhaps it was not Mark Zuckerberg’s intent or the plan of the creators of Gmail (which stores everything that goes through your in- and outboxes forever and ever) to remedy this problem, but they’ve come quite close.

Did you have that idea about first or was it Mary Sue? Aha, it was I, you can truthfully declare. Because, 473 posts ago on Mary Sue’s Facebook wall, you referenced this great idea you had during a boring discussion that day.

It’s there, it’s all pretty much there. From the moment you registered and began checking your Facebook six times a day, and updating it as frequently, your life has been archived with little effort or insight from you.

So it may or may not be clear that all of this comes forth in a sarcastic tone, because thankfully, it’s impossible to tell through Facebook or include in your Gmail messages every last detail of your life. But the point remains.

In this age of technology and government spying, you have to be aware of everything you say. And basically, be sure not to claim any idea as your own. Someone may be listening. And that someone may be the real creator of what you thought was your idea.

So watch out, be passive, and don’t even think about writing a book. But don’t take my word for it (a concluding line I borrowed from the host of my favorite show in elementary school, LeVar Burton of PBS’s “Reading Rainbow”). Be secure in knowing that this column contains not only my words, but those of all the other writers I have ever read.

Lauren Rockoff is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].