Sitting in class, just as the professor arrives, one student gives another student a birthday card. "How nice of you", says the professor. "I just looked her up on Face Book and found out today was her birthday", said the first student.
And off we went into a discussion of Face book, a phenomenon I had a dim awareness of, but did not completely understand. The professor has an account, all of the students have accounts, and I was encouraged to set up my own account.
The communication aspect of Face Book is unbelievable. For the cell phone, e-mail generation, access to social information does not come from traditional sources. It has even occurred to me that gossip is looking at a near term death, as everyone now has the ability to report their side of every story with a few strokes of the keyboard.
In talking to people about Face Book, I am astonished at the social impact of this kind of activity. Parents are aghast at the amount of information that is "published" by their children. It's fair to say that the notions of privacy held by my generation, which are significantly different from our parents' notions, are not even remotely similar to the privacy beliefs of this new generation. A parent told me a story about the daughter of a friend, an excellent student and well-rounded person in every respect, who posted a picture of herself, at her own Face Book site, posing in a thong and bra. The photo did not, according to my source, upset any of the girl's friends, but a few parents were outraged. Who's to say what is appropriate or not? Does my generation set the standard of behavior for our children, or was our revolt against our parents' standards nothing more than a generational act of hypocrisy? When I, and my wife, and our close friends are mouldering in the ground, or resting in the urn on the mantelpiece of some child's house, will our notions of outrage or inappropriate behavior evince peals of laughter (or expressions of bewilderment) from our progeny?
I tell you, Edith, the kids these days, they're different!
And off we went into a discussion of Face book, a phenomenon I had a dim awareness of, but did not completely understand. The professor has an account, all of the students have accounts, and I was encouraged to set up my own account.
The communication aspect of Face Book is unbelievable. For the cell phone, e-mail generation, access to social information does not come from traditional sources. It has even occurred to me that gossip is looking at a near term death, as everyone now has the ability to report their side of every story with a few strokes of the keyboard.
In talking to people about Face Book, I am astonished at the social impact of this kind of activity. Parents are aghast at the amount of information that is "published" by their children. It's fair to say that the notions of privacy held by my generation, which are significantly different from our parents' notions, are not even remotely similar to the privacy beliefs of this new generation. A parent told me a story about the daughter of a friend, an excellent student and well-rounded person in every respect, who posted a picture of herself, at her own Face Book site, posing in a thong and bra. The photo did not, according to my source, upset any of the girl's friends, but a few parents were outraged. Who's to say what is appropriate or not? Does my generation set the standard of behavior for our children, or was our revolt against our parents' standards nothing more than a generational act of hypocrisy? When I, and my wife, and our close friends are mouldering in the ground, or resting in the urn on the mantelpiece of some child's house, will our notions of outrage or inappropriate behavior evince peals of laughter (or expressions of bewilderment) from our progeny?
I tell you, Edith, the kids these days, they're different!
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