Here’s my Guardian column this week, a much shorter and more cogent version of this post about changes in friendship brought on by the social web.
Tags: facebook, guardian, social
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December 3rd, 2007 at 11:17 am
Jeff, I see the same problem with your argument: it seems to ignore what it takes to keep actual friendships and what is a feasible number of such friendships and goes along with the social networks’ self-interested presentation of mere contacts as friends. D.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
You link to the stat about teens and tweens in your BuzzMachine Post, but not in the Guardian column, and you miss a very important nuance.
“While 96% of online tweens and teens have used social networking technologies…”
Keyword: ONLINE.
According to a report available here about the UK’s digital divide, 11% of people aged 16-24 are not connected to the Internet and do not use the Internet. The stat you cited is 96% of ONLINE teens and tweens, but you wrote it as 96% of ALL teens and tweens.
So while it is still a high number, in truth the percentage of teens and tweens who have used social networks is in the 80s, not 96.
Additionally, the 96% stat is “have used.” In fact, only 71% of those approximately 89% of kids online use a social network at least once a week.
I recognize the age differences in the two reports and your column, but don’t have better data. Nonetheless, your point about socnets being “universal” is not as valid as you make it out to be…
December 7th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Gordon’s point is well-argued. Yet I am not persuaded because the direction of movement thus far does appear to be toward heavier use of social networks.
Even thought I agree with those who say that raw user numbers present an inflated view of usage because an undetermined large number of accounts are abandoned, the direction of movement is still the same.
Arguments to the contrary thus far impress me as similar to those made a decade ago regarding the adoption of email as a preferred means of communication, the eviscerating competition some of use foresaw for newspaper classified advertising and the eventual but somewhat more delayed transition away from ordinary broadcast radio and television.
Social networks can provide extraordinary communication advantages for those not reluctant to use them.
Neither tweens nor teens are reluctant to use them.
Certainly the statistical nature of the change is worthy of debate and intense further examination, but for my part I am primarily concerned about the underlying quality of network-cebtruc relationships.
If for example they are comparatively fragile and fail to provide appropriate social support in times of crisis, like the death of a parent or sibling, that fragility will echo destructively through the lives of our children and through the societies they inherit from us.