[LINK] "Brave New World?"

[rfmcdonald]

3 Quarks Daily's Sara Firisen writes about the impact of new social networking technologies on children, and the need to educate them in appropriate use.

Will our children understand loneliness in the sense that previous generations did? In the world of texting, Facebook, Foursquare, etc., continuous connectivity to many other people is now the norm, however superficial these relationships may or may not be. If this kind of connectivity isn’t sufficient, there are various services, both paid and free, that are connecting people with new potential “friends”, or at least acquaintances: www.rentafriend.com, a relatively new service, allows users to do just that, rent a friend for an hour or so. Craigslist, long a means for people to connect for casual hookups, or to advertise a yard sale, also has a section called Strictly Platonic, which enables users to find someone to connect with for everything from phone chats regarding, “jobs, men, losing weight, goals we hope to accomplish”, to finding someone to go to the theater with.

I don’t want to debate the pros and cons of this new digitally facilitated connectivity. Apart from anything else, it just is what it is. This is the future that children are growing up in, and if anything, it is almost certainly only the tip of the iceberg. Rather, the debate needs to be structured around what new life skills need to be taught in anticipation of this digital social revolution. I've written before about the importance of teaching children how to use social media safely and about maintaining their digital reputations. Perhaps, such a class should be part of every school’s curriculum, just as sex education should be. Children, even ones younger than teens, need to understand that it is likely that what they put out on the web today will follow them for many years, through college applications, job applications and dating.