Your laptop may put you in touch with millions. But if you are alone in reality, in

reality, you’re alone.

Catherine Blyth, ‘The Art of Conversation’

Social network sites

• Social networking sites are changing children’s brains, resulting in selfish and attention deficient young people.

• Social network sites risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity.

Social network sites

• Conducting personal relationships through a screen could be related to a rise in cases of both ADHD and autism.

• We are enthusiastically embracing the possible erosion of our identity through social networking sites since those that use such sites can lose a sense of where they themselves finish and where the outside world begins.

• Real conversation in real time may give way to sanitised and easier screen dialogues.

• Distinguished neuroscientist• Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology• Director of the Royal Institute• Chancellor of Heriot Watt University

Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE

Social network sites

• People’s health may be harmed by social networking sites.

• Lack of real personal interaction may have negative biological effects, such as upsetting immune systems, hormone levels, artery functions and mental functions.

• Ironically, they are playing a role in making people more isolated.

• Aric Stigman, Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine

• Biologist, journal of the Institute of Biology• ‘fantastic tools, but balance is all wrong-

national debate needed’

JISC found that most students surveyed resented the idea of academics interfering with their social

space.

• Online Environment Report (UCD)

• How useful is the Library page in Facebook and in Second Life?

• Responses muted, negative, dismissive.

• OCLC Report• Respondents felt it

was not the role of the Library and many Directors felt it was not a priority staff- wise and money- wise.

Issues• The Digital Divide

– Higher education in a Web 2.0 world JISC

• Management issues.– Staff time in social network areas

• Control (Education Guardian)– Operating in forum not owned by

university but by company which may use the information for commercial use’

– Facebook today? Second Life tomorrow? Where to put resources, assessment?

Security & Privacy

• Security Issues– The more I upload the details of my existence,

even in the form of random observations and casual location updates, the more I worry about giving away too much. It's one thing to share intimacies person-to-person. But with a community? Creepy. (S.Levy, Wired)

• Ownership of content– Facebook, forever, even after account deleted.

• 10 times more prone to virus attack than email.• Hunting ground for sexual predators.

Twitter

• It's something like a collection of personal blogs, only each entry is limited to 140 characters, so you end up with a vertical stack of bite-size, artificially flavored communication snacks. They're oddly compelling while remaining staunchly unsatisfying. (L.Sjoberg, Wired)

“Twittering stems from a lack of identity”(Oliver James, clinical psychologist)

“We are the most narcissistic age ever” “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist (Dr David Lewis, cognitive neuropsychologist )

Second Life

It is country club on a computer. Like-minded people who share a class, literacy and technological competence can converse with people like themselves

• Japan's Lost GenerationIn a world filled with virtual reality, the country's youth can't deal with the real thing.

• "Socially withdrawn" people find it extremely painful to communicate with the outside world, and thus they turn to the tools that bring virtual reality into their closed rooms.

• ‘Its possible to have real relationships, purely online.’ (Chinese survey)

Hikikomori, (social withdrawal)

‘People in general do not willingly read, if they have

anything else to amuse them.’

(Samuel Johnson)

There is no frigate like a book  

To take us lands away

(Emily Dickinson)

• Fragmented sense of time

• Reduced attention span

• Impatience with sustained inquiry

• Divorce from the past• Language erosion

Social networking is leading to a blurringof virtual reality and reality and assaultingour economy, our culture and our values.The moral fabric of our society is being unraveled by Web 2.0

Online Social networks & teaching & learning

• We need to debate the serious issues raised by some aspects of Web 2.0 in our Libraries before embracing it unreservedly. We owe it to the past, and to the future.