Is ‘facebooking’ turning today’s children into ‘couch potatoes’?

November 01 2007

MySpace, Facebook and children – out of control? That is what a panel of speakers set out to understand last Saturday at the Battle of Ideas, a debate festival held at the Royal College of Arts, South Kensington. The panel was composed by researchers and people that work in new media.

The privacy issue was the first to be mentioned and although there was a separate debate on it, the speakers believed that it was a basic part of the discussion. It was generally agreed that if small precautions were taken the users, for example children, would be safe, and that privacy and security dependent on the user and not necessarily the website.

As to the importance of this so-called “revolution in social relations”, there was a dispute as to where to place it. MT Rainey, founder and chairwoman of ‘www.horsemouth.co.uk’, said that a “revolution was email and Facebook [and other social networking sites] is not even close”. On the other hand, Norman Lewis, the author of ‘Digital Kids’, said this is creating a “bedroom culture” and interfering with the “ever changing relation between parents and children”.
A great part of the debate was also related to how much knowledge of technology do “digital natives” actually possess. The general belief was that kids, not exactly “whizz kids” but that they “live the technology”, according to Mr Lewis, and they learn that way, by “playing”, this is, just generally by consecutive attempts.

To the speakers, there seems to be an over-hyping of the issue. Robin Walsh, a social scientist and writer on youth and new media, says that last year there are 577 articles on the Guardian about Facebook and that “old people and journalists are obsessed with it”.

Despite this, Raj Anand, winner of the Business Week Entrepreneur of the Year award, was quick to not dismiss this as just children’s behaviour. “Is this for real? The answer is definitely yes”, he said. MT Rainey complemented the idea with “no one is saying that online relationships replace real relationships”. “They are different relationships”, said Mr Anand and they give children a space to play with each other, which they no longer do in reality.
To finalize, an appeal he made to “inspire young people about IT”, pointing out that he himself started off out of pure curiosity. Overall, everyone pointed out that this is “a transitional stage” and that the future is uncertain. Ultimately, a summary could be made in Robin Walsh’s words. “We should chill, let the kids play Halo and fill their Facebook pages and find something else to fill our lives with.”

Facebook: your new best friend?

This debate, a part of the Battle of Ideas festival, took into consideration what is it that we are doing online – is it friendship or social networking? It started with some astonishing figures: Facebook’s growth in the last year has been of 541%, with 4.5 million users in the UK alone, according to Nielsen ratings. Another study, by the Economic & Social Research Council, says that half the people in the UK rate friendship as high as close family or romantic relations.

The debate focused around two main opposing ideas: are these sites replacing social interaction and are they a new form of friendship; or are they a tool for companies and people to maximise their possibilities? MT Rainey, founder and chairwoman of ‘www.horsemouth.co.uk’ pointed out that “real friendship is not threatened” but there are new possibilities that present themselves with the web. There, “the wisdom of crowds meets the kindness of strangers and great things can happen.”

To Dr Mark Vernon, the author of “The Philosophy of Friendship”, the question posed was how we approach the concept of friendship, quoting ancient Greece as an example of “instrumental” friendship and opposing that concept to that of “real” friendship. According to Dr Stuart Waiton, lecturer in sociology and criminology at University of Abertray, Dundee, the political issue regarding friendship is the most important. To Dr Waiton, how the government is claiming that “friendship” can be taught in schools and this new “micromanagement of everyday life” is the question that really poses itself, since to him, real friendship necessarily involves intimacy. Also, an idea that he believes is that “friendship is not politically correct”, since “you can say what you want”.

For the most part of the debate, it seemed that debate struggled to predict what will happen to Facebook and to web-based relations, not really reaching any conclusion other than that it cannot replace real interaction.

The history of television and a look to the future

This debate intended to discuss what was the affect of the “reality shows” and the “democratisation” of TV and since it counted with the presence of two prominent figures from the BBC, Peter Horrocks, head of television news, and Raymond Snoddy, News Watch presenter, it also discussed the state of the BBC and what is expected from a public service television.

A lot of criticism from the majority of panel was made about the alleged “dumbing down” of British television and of the BBC. Mr Horrocks said it was the BBC’s job to produce programmes for the whole of the British population and to “provide choice”, since that was what the government had asked of the institution. According to Iain Dale, former conservative candidate and producer of live programming of 18 Doughty Street, television “audiences are fragmenting” and there are “audiences for specific programmes”. We criticise the BBC’s 6 o’clock news and praised Al-Jazeera, saying that he “never thought I would say such a thing”.

Minette Marrin, columnist for the Sunday Times and broadcaster, not only condemned the BBC but also said that there was an widespread greed from the part of TV producers for audiences and form the public an “appetite for empowerment and inclusion”. In her opinion this has lead to a vicious circle that has lowered the quality of TV. Guy Rundle, European editor of the Australian Arena Magazine, compared the American and British reality and lamented the “collapse of British TV”. To him, British television should look at American TV and how it tries “to contextualise reality and bring it back to the audience”. And what is more, he believes “serious and popular can be same”, what he named “social realism”.

Despite some contest from the audience, it was almost generally agreed that there seems to be an identity crisis in British TV and that it “is in transition”, with the impact of the internet as well as internet TV being something that still needs to be analyzed.

The future of journalism

This debate focused on the effect of the blogsphere, citizen journalism on what is now called “traditional media”, especially newspapers. According to the Economist, in five years, newspapers will be gone. So what does this mean for journalism?

According to George Brock, Saturday editor of The Times and president of the World Editors Forum, the prospects for journalism are very good. The majority of editors worldwide, according to a survey made by the World Editors Forum, are “very optimistic about digital media”. The main question, to him, is “How the hell do I make money out of digital?”  Since The Times website does, in approximate numbers, as much money as the print edition in a fortnight.

To Dr Andrew Calcutt, programme leader of the MA in Journalism and Society at the University of East London, the web creates big issues and questions as to who is or can be journalist. To him, there has been, and it seems that there will even more be a lot “personalisation” of news, that implies a “cult of personality”.

The big question was blogging, which Mr Brock dismissed easily. “Blogging is conversation and journalism has never been threatened by conversation.” The question does not pose itself either regarding about “political” bloggers. “Bloggers of political news are feeding off the mainstream media.” As to Dr Calcutt, he questioned “whether or not journalism has a different future than its recent past”. To him, the question of the “aspiration of objectivity” is “something that we cannot achieve individually” and the Internet’s independent means created an alternative for people.

As to the future of newspapers and how they will survive in the future, Mr Brock said the he was “betting against” the Chief Executive Officer of Google Europe, Dr. Eric Schmidt, since newspapers had already survived “the first wave” of new media.
There seemed to be very different opinions both from the panel and from the audience that even posed the question “What are newspapers for?” The future of newspapers is uncertain but does that mean that journalism is also in question?

By Sofia Diogo Mateus

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