We've all read the news articles about this phenomena, but this was closer to home. The stories poured out: teenagers fired for Facebooking on company time; high school students suspended for raunchy postings and photos; athletes bounced off the team for crossing the line online; high school teachers reprimanded for fraternizing with students on Facebook.
What's your take on social networks? Today in the New York Times, there's an article, "'Friends' Without a Personal Touch" that critiques a new book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle. The author is "concerned here not with the political uses of the Internet--as manifested in the current democratic uprisings in Egypt and other countries in the Middle East--but with its psychological side effects." One of the larger points of the book: "The notion that technology offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy and communication without emotional risk, while actually making people feel lonelier and more overwhelmed."
Turkle writes, "Once we remove ourselves from the flow of physical, messy, untidy life. . . we become less willing to get out there and take a chance. A song that became popular on YouTube in 2010, 'Do You Want to Date My Avatar?' ends with the lyrics 'And if you think I'm not the one, log off, log off, and we'll be done.'"