Social Networking: Youth's boon or bane

Contributed the following article to a Magazine's January 2012 issue . . .

thinking aloud what should be one's New Year resolution with regard to Social Networking,

particularly for someone in their budding years - in school or in college.

 

 

Man has always had the need to connect with dear ones.  Until less than a quarter of a century ago, people had to wait for atleast a week, for receiving a response from a loved one after writing to him or her, when one of them did not have a phone.  However in the last 15 years, communication has made rapid strides in the form of email and then mobile phone.   More recently, increased comfort with online chat and SMS have made communication using the newer forms cheaper too.  To add to that, convergence of Information Technology and Telecommunication Systems have also made it easier for people using different forms of communication to interconnect.

While reducing the wait time for responses and removing the anxiety when a loved one’s safety had to be confirmed, it has also given rise to a lot of superfluous communication.  Even without a great need to communicate, people have resorted to empty chatter to kill time and avoid boredom. Thus time that could otherwise have been used in more profitable activities and boredom that could have been overcome in meaningful ways are now being handled through casual communication with acquaintances and even strangers.  Social Networking has attracted a great number of folks who have the time and feel bored.

Before we see what good or evil has come out of Social Networking, let us first see in what form it exists today.  Blogs, Microblogs like Twitter and Social Sites like Facebook, MySpace and Orkut, all fill the Social networking landscape.  Blogs let people communicate their ideas with others over internet in the form of short essays or through pictures and video shots.  Microblogs are for those who want to communicate ideas but are either not comfortable penning essays or do not have the time to do so.   A microblog is a statement you make in a few sentences not exceeding 140 characters.  Sites like facebook do not restrict you and let you communicate through short status updates (similar to microblog), or links to essays or photographs on some site.

In the eighties, TV was the favourite pastime; in the late nineties, it was web-surfing and now in the twenty-first century, it is Social Networking.  Myspace that was launched in August 2003 has 30 million users.  Orkut that was launched in January 2004 by Google, currently has over 66 million active users worldwide.  The most successful of these is Facebook that has more than 800 million active users. It had opened to general public only in September 2006 after having been launched 2 years earlier for the student community in Boston, US.  Twitter has 300 million users today, having been launched in July 2006.

Social Networking indeed allows one to easily locate, connect with and communicate ideas to like-minded people.  Certainly, this has made collaborative learning a greater possibility.  For example, students in some institutions submit assignments on a Social Networking platform.  In some other, students are asked to post summaries of the classes they attended, so those who missed classes can update themselves by reading them.  Alumni groups on Social Networking sites have helped students decide on Colleges, Careers, etc., based on inputs from students who had passed out earlier.  Students have even got Question papers from previous years uploaded so that they are useful for future students when preparing for various examinations.  But the question is what proportion of time is spent on such useful stuff and how many young people restrict themselves to productive activities.

Psychology professor Larry Rosen of the California State University, in a speech titled “Poke Me: How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids” has warned of several negative outcome.  Her Research team had found the students’ concentration to lapse within just 15 minutes of study, because of the need to check their Facebook page almost every third minute.  Such students are also likely to have behavioural problems and “narcissistic tendencies” from spending too much time logged on to such sites.  The negative effects include making students more prone to vain, aggressive and anti-social behaviour.   According to their study, children under 13 who overuse social sites on a daily basis are also more likely to be prone to bouts of anxiety, depression, sleeping problems and stomach aches.

 “If you find honey, eat just enough --too much of it and you will vomit”, says Proverbs  25:15  We also have a Tamil saying that reads ‘In excess, even honey becomes poisonous’.   Even so, irrespective of all the good that can come out of Social Networking, it becomes a bane when it is used in addictive proportion.  On this New Year’s eve, let us resolve to live by guidelines about when we would get on to Social Networking sites and how long we would stay online.  Let us be wary about Social Networking being a good servant but a bad master.

Video & Online Gaming: Refresher or a Distraction?

Contributed the following article to the November 2011 issue of VANAMUTHAM,

a Tamil Christian Monthly magazine published by Serve India Mission,

that attempts to connect the world (with its events and practical issues) to God's word.

Entertainment is supposedly a leisure time activity, to provide some diversion from the monotony of work.  You will be familiar with the adage “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”  In fact, God gave man Sabbath so he is able to turn from six days of hard work and rest on the seventh day.  Sabbath was intended to be a renewing, rejuvenating experience for him, resting from hard labor and enjoying fellowship with his creator.  At thy right hand, there are pleasures for evermore, says the Psalmist (Psalms 16:11).

The good Lord who provided Adam and Eve with the fruits of the different trees that man could enjoy has also provided man with good diversions.  Reading is one and physical activity is another – one stimulating the mind and the other toning the body.  Pure pleasure brings one within the reach of God’s voice.  C.S.Lewis in his satire ‘The Screwtape Letters’, has Screwtape (senior devil) chastising Wormwood (junior devil) for failing to keep the patient (Christian) from crossing over to the Enemy’s (God’s) camp, as follows.  “You first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends.  In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there – a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone.  In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures.  Were you so ignorant as not to see the danger of this?”

Pleasure is God’s gift to man.  We again have this insight in the following words put into the mouth of Screwtape. “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on Enemy’s ground.  I know we have won many a soul through pleasure.  All the same, it is His invention, not ours.  He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.  All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence, we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable.  An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.”

For most folks, pleasure and entertainment go hand in hand.  People entertain themselves by catering to their senses. There are those that are outright recognized as evil and most people have no problem calling them so.  However, when it comes to modes of entertainment that appear to be harmless or that have both goodness and evil to offer, we are often not sure how to deal with them. Movies were a popular entertainment for the masses right from the turn of the 20th century until it was superseded by Television by the middle of the century. By 1962, 90% of U.S. households had a television set.  In India, television sales picked up in early eighties when Doordarshan introduced color telecasting and rapidly installed transmitters nationwide to coincide with the 1982 Asian Games.

The Television set came to be called the Idiot box, because people idled and idiotised themselves in front of it, for long hours.  Once entertainment was used to pass leisure time but slowly it became the default way to fill time so much so that it started eating into productive time.  While children before the eighties had good diversions like outdoor games, the TV got them glued indoors, making a fool of themselves in front of the box.  The latest to join this string of technological advancements to produce pleasure is the Electronic Game system. In 2000, Sony estimated that one out of every four households in the United States had a Sony PlayStation. Since then the numbers have only increased, with systems like the Nintendo Wii luring the casual gamer.

Electronic games have been around since the early 1970s.  Initially they were available on huge Coin-operated devices inside Game Arcades.  Some might remember the game ‘Space Invaders’.  Very soon their poor cousins comprising a hand-held console that could be plugged to Television, producing simple graphics and requiring custom plastic overlays to be taped on the TV screen, became available.  In mid-eighties, full-fledged Home Video Game consoles with high quality display and choice of games through pluggable cartridges, became available.  By mid-nineties, games became available on mobile phones.  All along, games that were originally developed for Arcade or Home Video Game system were also available for PCs through porting and subsequently they were also developed specifically for the computers.

Eminent neurologist Baroness Susan Greenfield told attendees at a Dorset conference that although certain technologies can encourage creativity, overall the effects are negative stemming from an unhealthy addiction to technology.  She was the Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain between 1998 and 2010 – the oldest independent Research body in the world.  In her speech ‘The Future of the Brain and The Brain of the Future’, she said “Screen technologies cause high arousal which in turn activates the brain system's underlying addiction. This results in the attraction of yet more screen-based activity.  Connections in the brain can be temporarily disabled by activities with a strong sensory content - effectively 'blowing the mind'. Or they can be inactivated permanently by degeneration - i.e. dementia. Other symptoms could include shortened attention span and a tendency for reckless behavior.”

Professor Mark Griffiths, a psychologist and Director of Nottingham Trent University’s International Gaming Research Unit, while disagreeing on overall effect being negative, acknowledges that when played to excess, video game playing can in some extreme cases be addictive, especially online video game playing where the game never pauses or ends, and has the potential to be a 24/7 activity.

With the turn of the twenty first century, advanced technologies such as online gaming over internet, use of motion as input, Infra Red tracking and support for wireless controllers, have come to be employed. This allows people to play virtual Tennis wielding wireless controllers strapped to wrist or held in the palm – not on real court outside but through a simulation indoor.  Susan Greenfield is worried that spending time online gaming could pose problems for millions of youngsters.  “There is a need to be outside, to climb trees and feel the grass under your feet and in your face.”  Experts opine that overuse injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, bursitis, and tendonitis once reserved for long-time computer users could impact these youngsters.  They also fail to develop socialization skills as long hours of being caught up with video games leave no desire for one-on-one human company.  This is normally accompanied by a decline in verbal memory performance.  In the case of children, loss of physical activity and excessive eating that accompanies gaming often lead to obesity and neglect of studies leads to drop in academic performance.

Most importantly, the Home Video Game consoles tend to suck individuals into addiction.  Such an addiction leads to gross wastage of precious time, distracting the individual from life’s greater purpose.  John Wesley’ mother Susanna Wesley had cautioned her young son against anything that took off his relish of spiritual things.  God asked Gideon who was leading an army of 10,000 for battling the Medianites to separate out folks who cupped water in their hands and lapped it up like a dog while stopping at a river for a drink, and send away the rest.  These were folks who kept an eye for potential approach of the enemy unlike those who were distracted from their purpose, being immersed in water literally while quenching their thirst.  Any pleasure to be legitimate must refresh us without distracting us from, diminishing or destroying our final goal.