Does Facebook Make Us Colder and More Impatient?

Posted on March 17, 2009 at 2:00 pm

Social network sites risk infantilizing the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity, according to a leading neuroscientist.
The UK paper The Guardian reports that Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, has found that teen laptop.jpg
children’s experiences on social networking sites “are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilized, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity”.
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Social networking sites can provide a “constant reassurance – that you are listened to, recognized, and important”. Greenfield continued. This was coupled with a distancing from the stress of face-to-face, real-life conversation, which were “far more perilous … occur in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever or witty responses” and “require a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and perhaps even to pheromones, those sneaky molecules that we release and which others smell subconsciously”.
She said she feared “real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction.”
This seems a bit of an over-reaction to me. Young people will make a lot of mistakes on Facebook and other social networks as they do in other aspects of their relationships. This time of life always has been and always will be a stage characterized by intense feelings and difficult lessons. Social networking has its disadvantages — the ability to hide behind partial or full anonymity, the capacity for almost-instant escalation and distribution, the invasions of privacy. But it also has its advantages as a form of training wheels for the difficult relationship navigational connections. Adam Gopnick writes in a touching essay included in Through the Children’s Gate about how his 11-year-old could not answer the question “How was school today?” in person but was happy to communicate with him via instant messaging. They would even IM each other while sitting together watching a game on TV. Gopnick, initially thrilled by this mode of communications, ran into his own failure of understanding, but it all ended sweetly, with love and laughter.
In the New York Times, Peggy Orenstein reports Growing Up With Facebook about the way the past is not prologue but present on Facebook. Orenstein, like Slate’s Brian Braiker, was disconcerted to find herself tagged in pictures from her past that went from being tucked away in shoe boxes to being available to everyone. She wonders about the effect this will have on young people who no longer will have the freedom to cast off old roles and relationships when they go away to college.

There’s some evidence that college students have mixed feelings about being guinea pigs for the faux-friendship age. One student interviewed for a study of why and how college students use Facebook, which was published last year in The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, admitted that being privy to the personal details of “friends” who she had not seen in years made her uncomfortable. “Someone from earlier in her life had broken up with a boyfriend,” an author of the article, Sandra L. Calvert, a professor and chairwoman of the psychology department at Georgetown University, told me. “She felt she knew all these intimate details about this person, yet they hadn’t actually been in touch for five years.” On the other hand, a study published in 2007 in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggested that hanging onto old friends via Facebook may alleviate feelings of isolation for students whose transition to campus life had proved rocky.

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It could be that my generation was the anomalous one, that Facebook marks a return to the time when people remained embedded in their communities for life, with connections that ran deep, peers who reined them in if they strayed too far from the norm, parents who expected them to live at home until marriage (adult children are already reclaiming their childhood rooms in droves). More likely, though, the very thing that attracts us oldsters to Facebook — the lure of auld lang syne — will be its undoing. Kids, who will inevitably want to drive a stake into the heart of former lives, may simply abandon the service (remember Friendster?) and find something new: something still unformed, yet to be invented — much like themselves.

Or, perhaps they will evolve with Facebook and it will evolve with them. Instead of swapping pictures of friends behaving badly at keggers, perhaps they will post baby pictures and cupcake recipes. It is likely that some future Facebook group will be a place for the parents of young children in 2025 to talk about how to cope with whatever impact the latest technological innovation is having on their school-age children.
In the meantime, parents need to remind their children that middle school and high school friendships are tough enough without broadcasting their most humiliating aspects to the world. Parents should, of course, talk to kids about being respectful and responsible in relationships online and in RL (real life) and most of all make sure that they demonstrate the behavior they want to encourage. The more parents do to show kids that the greatest satisfaction comes from in-person communication in a context of trust and kindness, the more likely that social networking will be an adjunct to and not a replacement for the real thing.

Dora’s Disappointing Makeover

Posted on March 7, 2009 at 4:00 pm

Here is the opening paragraph of a new press release:
Mattel, Inc. (NYSE:MAT) and Nickelodeon/Viacom Consumer Products (NVCP), announced today that Dora the Explorer™ is growing up! The companies have introduced a whole new way to look at Dora for girls five years and up. This groundbreaking initiative, featuring fashion dolls and accessories, is a completely new brand extension that empowers girls to influence and change the lives of Dora and her new friends. It’s innovative, diverse, wholesome, bi-lingual and entertaining.
“A whole new way to look at Dora” and “a completely new brand extension” both translate to “more things for us to sell,” of course. And my heart sinks to hear of plucky little Dora being turned into a “brand extension” “featuring fashion dolls and accessories.” So Dora is going to turn into Barbie now, all about what she wears and has instead of what she does and what she learns?
Judy Berman wrote on Salon’s Broadsheet that this makes the new middle schooler Dora “with a whole new fashionable look” sound like she’s becoming a Gossip Girl.

(S)tarting this fall, for the not-terribly-recession-conscious price of $59.99, your five year old will also be able to buy an older, doll version of the character. Though Mattel and Nick are waiting a few months to reveal exactly what she’ll look like, a bizarre silhouette accompanying the press release shows that, at the very least, Dora will have long hair and be decked out in a short skirt or dress and a pair of flats.

Berman does not think this will go over very well with kids. “You can put a skirt on Dora and cinch her waist, but by the time kids reach kindergarten, they may well think of Dora as ‘baby stuff.'” But the authors of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes, Lyn Mikel Brown, Ed.D and Sharon Lamb, Ed.D, have put up an online petition calling for Mattel and Nickelodeon to halt Dora’s makeover.

What happened? FIRST it was Dora’s Magic Talking Kitchen, THEN Dora Princess, THEN Dora Babysitter in her cousin’s show, NOW DORA TWEEN.

Alas, we saw the signs. The cute flower lip gloss, the pinkified look, the sudden separation of Dora and Diego shows…What next? Dora the Cheerleader? Dora the fashionista with stylish purse and stilettos? Dora the Pop Star with Hoppin’ Dance Club and “Juice” Bar? We can expect it all, because that’s what passes as “tween” in the toy department these days….

We know that if the original Dora grew up, she wouldn’t be a fashion icon or a shopaholic. She’d develop her map reading skills and imagine the places she could go. She’d capitalize on those problem solving skills to design new ways to bring fresh water to communities in need around the world. Maybe she’d become a world class runner or follow her love of animals and become a wildlife preservationist or biologist. We’ll never know because the only way a girl can grow up in tween town, is to narrow that symphony of choices to one note. It’s such a sell out of Dora, of all girls.

I agree. It’s a sell-out of Dora and of her fans, another example of popular culture promoting the idea that any girl over age 5 doesn’t care about anything but how she looks.

Raising Spiritually Healthy Children

Posted on March 2, 2009 at 8:00 am

I am very pleased that one of my favorite people will be talking to parents about raising spiritually healthy children in a Tikkun telephone forum today at 6:00 PM PST (9:00 PM EST).

Rev. Debra Haffner has worked with parents and children for over twenty-five years and has written extensively about raising healthy children. On Monday’s Phone Forum she will discuss ways to nurture a child’s spirituality beyond worship and education, including exploring life’s big questions together, creating shared rituals, and promoting an ethic of action or tikkun olam into every child’s upbringing. Rev. Haffner is a sexologist and a minister, and the Director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing.

If you would like to participate in the call, dial 1 888 346 3950 and ENTER CODE 11978. Tikkun Managing Editor Dave Belden will interview Debra Haffner for twenty minutes, then he’ll take questions from participants.

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Chris Brown and Michael Phelps — What Do We Tell Kids?

Posted on February 9, 2009 at 3:42 pm

This has been something of a bad boy week. A-Rod confessed to steroid use. “Dark Knight” star Christian Bale was taped when he erupted into a furious and very profane rage at a technician on his set. A photograph of Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps puffing marijuana at a party was published in England. And assault allegations against pop star Chris Brown have already led to suspension of his ad campaign with Wrigley, though so far no charges have been filed.
This is particularly troubling in the case of Phelps (age 23) and Brown (age 19) because they have been role models for many young fans who may be disappointed and confused. It is a good chance for a family discussion of consequences — reputational and financial — for foolish choices. The Phelps photograph was apparently taken with a cell phone. Parents must make it clear to teenagers that in a world of omnipresent capacity for taking pictures and videos and instantly making them available via the internet, even if the subject is not a celebrity. Even these very young performers have devoted a great deal of time to building careers that rest as much on their reputations for honesty, dedication, and professionalism as on their talent. A momentary bad judgment has put all of that at risk. When our generation was in school, a threat was having some infraction on our “permanent record.” In today’s world, everything goes on the permanent record. Even a photograph removed from Facebook or Myspace lives on forever, to be accessed by potential employers, admissions directors, and friends. This is a good time to talk with them about the choices they make in posting photographs of others as well as those taken of them.
It is also a good time to talk about apologies. Bale said nothing for four days and then impulsively called into a radio station that had been making fun of him. While he apologized unreservedly, he said “I regret it. I ask everybody to sit down and ask themselves if they have ever had a bad day and lost their temper and really regretted it immensely.” That “bad day” reference sounds too much like an excuse; I guarantee the person who was having the bad day in that situation was the technician on the other end of the tirade. A-Rod tried the same “different era” excuse that Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain used to explain his $1.2 million office decorating expenses.
Phelps’ apology was prompt and unequivocal. He is suspended for three months from competing but his endorsement contracts seem to be staying with him. Brown has not yet made a statement. This is a good opportunity to talk to kids about what people do to acknowledge and rectify mistakes and about how loyal friends and fans can still support people even if they’re not perfect. And it is a good opportunity to let them know that however they feel — disappointed or supportive or both — that is legitimate and understandable.

Is ‘Coraline’ Too Scary for Kids?

Posted on February 7, 2009 at 4:16 pm

It is always a challenge to guide parents about how scary a movie is, but it is especially difficult with this week’s release of “Coraline,” the 3D stop-motion animated film based on a popular book for children by Neil Gaiman. By coincidence, Gaiman was just awarded this year’s top prize for children’s literature, the Newberry award, for The Graveyard Book, the story of a boy raised by ghosts.
SPOILER ALERT: There are ghosts in “Coraline,” too, plus a very scary insect-like predator who likes to replace children’s eyes with sewn-on black buttons and many other macabre and grotesque images. But is that scarier than “A Series of Unfortunate Events” or “The Wizard of Oz” or the Narnia movies? Is it scarier than Disney movies like “Bambi” or “The Lion King” (both feature the death of a parent) or fairy tales like “Hansel and Gretel” or “Snow White?”
Some of the commenters on this blog think so, and have noted sharply that they think this movie is too scary for younger children. The Motion Picture Association’s ratings board gave it a PG. I originally recommended it for 4th grade and up but on reflection have changed it to middle school and up, though when I saw the film again last night there were younger children in the audience who seemed to be doing fine with it.
There are many kinds of scary material and every kid reacts differently to every one of them. Some are disturbed by tension and peril but don’t mind battle scenes. Some get very upset when an animal is injured but don’t blink an eye when a human character is killed. Some kids react because they are sensitive about events going on in their own lives, loss of a grandparent or a pet, a move, or divorce.
In “Coraline,” some kids may be rattled by the images in this film like the skeletal designs of one (good) character’s helmet and gloves or the increasingly spidery appearance of the villain. Some may be upset by the themes of the film that includes the ghosts of three eyeless and devoured children. Some will be very reassured by the brave and resilient heroine, finding it exciting but not disturbing.
The New York Times’ A. O. Scott led off his review of “Coraline” with some thoughts on its capacity to scare its young audience:

There are many scenes and images in “Coraline” that are likely to scare children. This is not a warning but rather a recommendation, since the cultivation of fright can be one of the great pleasures of youthful moviegoing. As long as it doesn’t go too far toward violence or mortal dread, a film that elicits a tingle of unease or a tremor of spookiness can be a tonic to sensibilities dulled by wholesome, anodyne, school-approved entertainments.

This brings us back to the enduring appeal of scary stories. Children have read millions of scary books from R.L. Stine and Lemony Snicket and teenagers have bought millions of tickets to the “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th,” “Nightmare on Elm Street,” and “Saw” series. The top box office films of all time include scary stories like “Jaws,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and “Silence of the Lambs.” Even family-friendly G-rated films like “Finding Nemo,” “Babe,” and “The Sound of Music” have scary parts. That is because one of the reasons we tell and read and watch stories is because they give us a way to understand and conquer our fears. It will always be difficult for parents to determine what will be too scary for their children. I will do my best to describe what I see and provide some guidance but ultimately the decision can only be made by the ones who know the child best. And ultimately, parents must realize that sometimes a part of seeing a movie is being unsettled and learning to resolve those feelings.
P.S. “Coraline” also has a burlesque performance with two fat, elderly ladies in tiny little costumes that turn out to zip off, revealing younger, lither performers inside. How should a parent evaluate that on a scale of nudity or sexual material? Because it was comic and because it turned out not to be “real,” but a humorous fat suit, I described it as “brief comic nudity (skimpy costume).” I welcome other suggestions and reactions.