Are we in danger?

There's a lot of interest recently in the potential dangers of social media. With the growing popularity of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg and other, the question that the world specialists in social studies, neuroscience and psychology has been asking themselves is: are we in a danger of loosing our connection to the "real world" and immerse entirely in the virtual reality, where everyone seems more attractive, more interesting, more social.

In his article for the Business Week, Vivek Wadhma, compares this flood of new technology with the popularisation of books at the turn of 18th century. Irrelevant? Or is it perhaps that every change in the society, in the way we live and interact with the outside world automatically makes us suspicious and distrustful? True, with the advent of social networking we spend considerably more time e-mailing, twitting, texting, fb-ing rather than talking to each other face-to-face. But isn't it like that with every new toy that after a period of initial excitement our interest declines rather rapidly? How many of you after trying 30 new applications on Facebook retreated in the end to using only a few really basic tools like Wall and Events section? And isn't it also true that the more we scrutinize and demonize the more interest it creates, hence that period of fascination and the number of people trying the "forbidden fruit" grows exponentially?

I'll leave it at that.

I hope you are enjoying the sun and don't forget - there's a whole wide world out there...

Miss B.