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[Gereonb]

There is no reason educated, intellectual and reasonable humans should not sign up for an account with Facebook, after all nobody is forcing you to post cyber-bable. A lot of the people i know use it in a completely grown up manner and i find the posts and information can be very useful and rewarding sometimes.
Of course there is a lot of hype and always some story in the media about this and that, some teen invited 10000 kids to his house and it got recked, but don't let that ruin it for you, find out about Facebook, learn the things you need to about it and only then can you make a conscious decision as to whether it is something you need to have or not.

 

[Thardy]

There is no reason educated, intellectual and reasonable humans should not sign up for an account with Facebook, after all nobody is forcing you to post cyber-bable. A lot of the people i know use it in a completely grown up manner and i find the posts and information can be very useful and rewarding sometimes.
Of course there is a lot of hype and always some story in the media about this and that, some teen invited 10000 kids to his house and it got recked, but don't let that ruin it for you, find out about Facebook, learn the things you need to about it and only then can you make a conscious decision as to whether it is something you need to have or not.

Exactly. I see no reason why a person in a industry like photography can't benefit from a medium that would increase your exposure. Many are doing it right now. But on the other hand " to thine own self be true".

 

[Roger Hicks]

Randy,

I'm with you here.

I'm a high school teacher in ICT and social studies (don't you like the combination in this particular case?😉) and have recently been involved in a task force to apply modern media in teaching. And I agree with your observation that youngsters today are using social media in a whole different way than we 'elders' can fathom.

One thing we found is that while teenagers used to cycle through friendships and social contacts to 'shape' their personality in the old days, they now are using social media for that since it's far safer. Much easier to behave in a certain way online to see what the reactions are, than to do so in real life and get smacked on the eye.

The result indeed is that many teenagers get alienated from others because they are considering the online presence of another person to likely be a role rather than a true person. They tend to dismiss the emotions of others as less real, even if coming from real other people.

This was particularly frightening when it came to their definitions of concepts like 'pressure': many kids nowadays do not consider mental coersion to be pressure at all, only physical coersion (i.e. violence, both sexual and non-sexual) is considered as pressure. They are less sensitive to the emotions of others than before. Society gets tougher indeed.

There are studies in the Netherlands to back this up. Use of social media has a bigger impact here than elsewhere, particularly since social networking sites like Hyves have gained huge popularity with kids under 12 years old and due to the high penetration of broadband internet (speeds of 340Kb/s) to Dutch households, close to 40 percent in 2010 (the US had 26 percent in 2010).

Those in this thread that dismiss the perils of social media and online presence for kids are likely not (yet) a parent of a teenager and do not work in education.

I'm interested in any teenager parent's or educator's opinion on this and would like to read them here, for the sake of educating myself more on the subject.

This is indeed fascinating, as it's not a "Young people today..." rant but a look at how society changes/is changing.

One personal anecdote, and one story from a social worker chum.

A few years ago (maybe five), I saw a young man walking along one of the man streets of Loudun with three pretty girls of the same sort of age: lycée students, I'd guess. At his age, I'd have been walking like a prince in such circumstances, trying to talk to alll of them at once (in fact, I did, on occasion). All four were on mobile 'phones...

My social worker chum lives in the UK. I asked her if the horror stories in the English gutter press about 'binge drinking' among teenagers were true, or if, perhaps, they were an exaggeration.

They were true, she said, "And here's the reason. Remember when we were twelve, and you'd never dare say you fancied someone, and in fact you weren't really sure what it meant yourself, so it came down to horseplay in the playground? When giving someone a push was pretty much tantamount to saying you fancied them? Well, the kids I see are still like that at 18, 19, 20. They have to get ratted [a technical term in English social work, meaning 'hopelessly drunk'] before they can get off with each other. These kids just don't know how to behave face to face, becuse they spend all their time on computers and mobile 'phones."

Now, it's disputable whether either story indicates a trend, and even more disputable whether anyone can do anything about it if there is a trend, but both point somewhat in the same direction as your research. Which rather raises the question: do young Netherlanders get drunk for the same reasons? If not, why not?

Cheers,

R.

 

[semilog]

It also strikes me that Facebook can be a excellent way of pretending you have friends, without really making any effort to maintain the contact on a personal level: "I care enough about you to tell you this personally, and I think you are a good enough friend that the news may be of interest to you." Otherwise, you can broadcast your life (and Facebook is pretty much broadcast) and let your 'friends' pick up the pieces that suit them. To me, that's not friendship. At best, it's an illusion of friendship.

If FB existed in a vacuum and we did not engage in other modes of social interaction, then I'd agree. But FB emphatically does not exist in such a vacuum, any more than telegraph or a telephone; or a quill, an emulsion of carbon black, and a piece of parchment does. My best friends on FB are people whom I've known for 10 or 20 or even all of my 40-some years. If I were to name the six closest friends that I've ever had, only one of them is not on FB.

Most of my communication with friends and family is through email, IRC/chat, and FB.

Generally speaking, we use the telephone only to arrange imminent meetings (e.g., I'm running late for dinner at your house due to traffic) or to convey news of catastrophes.

I'm not kidding. We've had a lot of very, very serious medical crises in my family over the last couple of years, and that's pretty much what causes the phone to ring around here. That, and pollsters, and political smear ads. That's why I personally have come to just despise the thing. Phone rings, my blood pressure spikes; there's a good chance that bad news is on the way.

 

[Roger Hicks]

If FB existed in a vacuum and we did not engage in other modes of social interaction, then I'd agree. But FB emphatically does not exist in such a vacuum, any more than telegraph or a telephone; or a quill, an emulsion of carbon black, and a piece of parchment does. My best friends on FB are people whom I've known for 10 or 20 or even all of my 40-some years. If I were to name the six closest friends that I've ever had, only one of them is not on FB.

Most of my communication with friends and family is through email, IRC/chat, and FB.

Generally speaking, we use the telephone only to arrange imminent meetings (e.g., I'm running late for dinner at your house due to traffic) or to convey news of catastrophes.

I'm not kidding. We've had a lot of very, very serious medical crises in my family over the last couple of years, and that's pretty much what causes the phone to ring around here. That, and pollsters, and political smear ads. That's why I personally have come to just despise the thing. Phone rings, my blood pressure spikes; there's a good chance that bad news is on the way.

But if no-one ever calls for a chat or with good news, isn't this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Isn't there something good about hearing someone's voice, their laugh?

Someday, if I live long enough, I'll probably get a 'phone call saying my father is dead (he's 84, after all, and we live 800 miles apart). But until then, we enjoy calling one another every now and then.

Cheers,

R.

 

[semilog]

But if no-one ever calls for a chat or with good news, isn't this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Isn't there something good about hearing someone's voice, their laugh?

Sure. But people have unmistakeable voices in writing, too – even on Facebook. And I can assure you that the series of unfortunate events that I'm alluding to did not occur as a consequence of the fact that we tend to use media other than acoustic telephony. I don't say that I never make a phone call, or get called, or even enjoy a phone call to an old friend. But there are other ways. I did, after all, just set my dad up for video calls, and that I'm genuinely excited about.

 

[zauhar]

Dear Roger,

Please allow me to quote from your post to explain my point further.



This one is easy for any reader here I guess: how would you feel about people that do have carefully cultivated personae?


Now ask yourself, how would kids feel about a world that they consider largely occupied by carefully cultivated personae, rather than true people?

Spot on Johan. Thanks for your observations in your previous post, also. Glad to know you are a teacher, you are someone who can provide a counterbalance to the lifestyle these kids are caught in.

So those of us who are concerned about social media are just "old" and need to get over it? Some of us (like Johan) have daily contact with these kids. My wife is a child psych, and a big part of her day-to-day conversations with kids has to do with cyber-bullying. Think of it - a kid kills themselves because of words coming over a wire. Why? Could it be because their entire social life is bound up with a computer screen?

I don't object to anyone using facebook, or twitter, or standing in the middle of the street with a hands-free cell phone talking to the air and acting like a complete idiot. I have good friends who love facebook. I know people who maintain important business networks using twitter. Using social media doesn't meant that a PARTICULAR individual is messed up. Most of you on the other side of this debate insist on seeing this in purely personal terms ( "I found my old friend after thirty years, so facebook is a good thing"). Those on my side are looking at the broader impact of social media; some of us have a lot of pertinent experience and are generally motivated by a little more than crankiness. At least recognize that.

Anyway, I missed the rest of this interesting conversation yesterday because I spent most of the day at the shore with my M3, shooting with FILM. Which I think was the original point of this thread? ;-)

Randy

 

[semilog]

I don't object to anyone using facebook, or twitter, or standing in the middle of the street with a hands-free cell phone talking to the air and acting like a complete idiot.

Object?!? How could anyone here object to idiots in the middle of the street with a hands-free cell phone talking to the air? Those people are some of the most primo street photo targets in existence!

 

[Doug]

Good point, semilog 😀