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.