The Dark Side of Social Media: Day Twenty-Seven

In general, we have focused on the positive potential of social media. As a business tool it offers tremendous opportunity if used creatively and correctly; see Day Four; Day Eighteen; and Day Twenty-Four. But are there other consequences to the proliferation of social media in our society? Research and observation say yes.

According to Susan Greenfield, Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Oxford University, Social Networking is changing children's brains. This is not a change for the better. Her research shows that children who are active in social media risk shorter attention spans, a need for immediate gratification, lack of empathy and loss of personal identity.

From our own personal observations, we are seeing self-promotion becoming paramount to substance. Consider Tyra Banks on The Tyra Show. We squirm at the flagrant exhibitionism but she's certainly got an audience. We see kids like our daughters taking endless pictures of themselves and each other, recording their adventures, mundane though they be, for later enjoyment. There's a profound metaphysical shift in the way we interact and experience the world--a fragmentation of personality--Greenfield confirms this in the article cited above. We seem to have taken the position of an outsider looking in (spectator ab extra) who distances herself from the action and yet comments readily on it. Social media encourages this, but it's mastubatory. In addition to projecting a persona, real or idealized, we are also, in a sense, consuming ourselves.

Regardless of the neurological and sociological consequences, however, social media are here to stay.


Rather than becoming a Luddite, or worse, making it the forbidden fruit that your children will pursue in secret with possibly disastrous consequences, employ safe, family friendly strategies to introduce your kids into this world. Sites like Togetherville and Club Penguin are good entry level social networks that are geared to the younger set.


Speaking of forbidden fruit, marriage counselors report that Facebook is a factor in 20% of the divorce petitions filed in 2009. Relationship advice is not something we are here to dispense but clearly the ease of interacting on Facebook makes infidelity, at least in the emotional sense, a little too convenient, seeing as shaved legs, lipstick, the buying of drinks and opening of doors are not required. If you find yourself spending more time in cyber flirtation than with your significant other, please take a long hard look at both. Signing off now to go say hello to my hubby.

Posted by: Keri and Claire

The Agony and the Ecstasy: Day Twenty

Blogging can be influential, interesting, funny, informative, controversial, provocative. (It can also be frivolous, trivial, inane and pointless, but those don't interest us at all.)

Forget the wave of the future, it is the wave of the present. Like any power tool, though, it must be used with care.

Elizabeth Collins, an English teacher at a private girls' high school, did not blog with caution and was fired over a post she wrote. Although she did not mention her school or student by name, Collins, known to be the blog's author, criticized a student's presentation which did not meet the assignment criteria. Unfortunately for Collins, the student happened to be the child of a major donor to the school. So Collins clearly f&%$#@ with the wrong marine even if the kid was off base. The end result is another cautionary tale demonstrating that professional decorum, or at least some common sense, must be part of your social networking plan no matter what you do for a living.

So that's the agony.

Onto the ecstasy.

An increasing number of bloggers have ended up with book contracts and movie deals. That's right--they blog, build up a following, get noticed, pitch a book or script, and their already established platform catapults them. This trend is further detailed here. Thank you, More Magazine. We also found some great strategies on how to accomplish this here. Thank you, baekdal.com.


Witness the following success stories:

Biking Blogger Bags Book Deal

The Happiness Project

Julie and Julia

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lachs

Dooce.com



As an aspiring writer with an agent who is flogging my book proposal far and wide, I have learned that simply writing a clever, humorous and useful volume only part of the necessary package these days. Hence, my experimentation and immersion here, where I am gathering the wisdom and skill to meet these requirements. Stay tuned for bedazzling future blog which will make me a household name in the future.



Posted by: Keri

Day Eight: S.ave O.ur S.ouls

We know it's happening; things are a-changing round here.

Friday's tweet shared our excitement about a clever software program, Tweetdeck, which enables you to manage all your social networking posts from a single dashboard.

Did we really just write that?

Not only can we parlay the jargon...we have taken to fantasizing about acquiring an iPhone, or the even sexier iPad. Think how much more glamorous / sexy / cool (strike as appropriate), we'd be if we had one or both of those..?

Howzat? What about that Coach bag we've been saving up for?

Boy, how we've changed.




We even threw a garden party, inviting respective husbands, friends and neighbors and found people comparing notes on their social networking experiences. (The majority of punters were pretty sceptical by the way, especially on its relevance to business or for providing professional services.)

A lone voice in the wilderness was a social networking guru working mainly for consumer brands as part of a collective of creatives, fondly described as a "collaboratory". Her comments are worth considering.

Just remember to think of Social Media as the Wild West. Other than the basics (how to twitter, how to use tweetdeck, Google Analytics etc, there really aren't any set rules, which makes it sometimes very frustrating. Just stay fluid and enjoy the ride. She also added: Working with Social Media is also a bit like working with Spaghetti. You throw it at the wall and see what sticks...

Spaghetti and the Wild West in the same breath. We can feel a very poor segue creeping up on us...

Do you know the origin of the term "Spaghetti Western"..? These low budget movies, starring American actors, were so called because in order to save on costs they were mostly filmed in the mountains of Italy or Spain - hence the association with spaghetti.

Another interesting, and vaguely related factoid, Ugly Americans - that devastatingly satirical cartoon on Comedy Central - will return to our screens in the Fall; see the cartoon above for a taste (pun intended).

See, we told you you'd learn lots reading this blog.

Posted by: Claire

Day One, Uomo vs Mac

Remember that scene from Zoolander?




This is how we feel a lot of the time. Having taken a short break from the work force amidst the tech explosion, we missed a bit. Now that our kids can change their own clothes, not to mention passwords, screen names, filters and the like, we need to play catch up.

Today we set up a YouTube Account, uploaded video, and built this blog all in 1 hour and 41 minutes, give or take a croissant, brioche and two cups of loose leaf Chrysanthemum tea.

We'd like to say it's easier said than done, but it wasn't. The good news is, it wasn't entirely due to our limitations. Despite our fragile self confidence and immediate presumption that we are to blame for the glitch, we learned that this is not always the case. Amid our attempt to sign on, Google experienced a server error and sidelined us for a bit. We persevered, however, and this is what we learned:

1. When signing up for YouTube, it is hard to find a user name. Many are taken and we tried thrice before succeeding. We linked several uncommon words together and finally hit. We will tape the name and password to computer til they are firmly committed to memory.

2. Help page was surprisingly helpful.

3. We spent 15 minutes struggling to copy our video clip. The penny dropped; we were doing things back to front. We wanted to retrieve video from YouTube and post to the blog--so we asked it to "upload". To our way of thinking, this meant that they would send their clip to us. To their way of thinking, "upload" meant we wanted to post our video to YouTube. Duh. Finally, we happened upon a "Share" button, lovely little thing. That gave us the ability to post the clip on blogger, twitter, facebook, and possibly the Vatican website if we liked. Hence, we learned the difference between upload and share. Any scoop on what download means? (What goes up must come down, right?)

Thus ends our inaugural experience with YouGle and GooTube.

Thank God it's Friday.

Posted by: Claire and Keri