• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

Growing signs social media are good for us

February 16, 2012 By Anne 3 Comments

The other night the three of us still at home were talking face-to-face with our son and brother 1,000 miles away for about an hour, for free (well, not counting the cost of our family Internet connection). While enjoying the banter, I was wondering at this ability we had to look into each other’s eyes across great distances on computer screens. Only the ability to hug would be better. But having more means and opportunities for casual, fun digital connections certainly doesn’t decrease the hug opps.

Our family was using Facebook videochat but could’ve been in a Google+ “hangout” or on Skype, which I’ve used a lot for work-related international video conversations at the same “cost.” But we also stay in touch via email and cellphone texting, and our kids hang out with their friends in a wider variety of ways, including Xbox Live. [One quick side note: We in the Internet safety field used to talk about “disinhibition” and how a lack of facial expression and body language online could reduce empathy in online communication; that may still be true, but think about how its impact is diminishing as videochat gains ground.]

So how is this socially isolating?

Because of social digital media and devices, the people “we depend on are more accessible today than at any point since we lived in small, village-like settlements,” wrote Rutgers University professor Keith Hampton in the New York Times – and maybe more than at any point in history, since we no longer have to be in the same village. Reading the sociologist’s commentary reminded me of how lucky I am not to be my parents, who – when I was in college – had to accept a collect call for which I had to negotiate time on my dormitory floor’s pay phone once or twice a month. Social media are far from socially isolating, even though plenty of people theorize they’re responsible for a reported loss of interest in marriage and family (see USATODAY).

So where’s the evidence to the contrary? Well, there are multiplying signs that social media are actually improving things. For example, “Core Networks, Social Isolation, and New Media,” a study in the journal Information, Communication & Society that Dr. Hampton co-authored, found that not only that social isolation has not increased since 1985, digital technologies have had a positive impact on people’s personal networks and their diversity. “Neither living alone nor using social media is socially isolating,” he concludes in the New York Times. “Regardless of whether the participants were married or single, those who used social media had more close confidants.”

Social media for resilience development?

Another academic study, covered by my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid in his blog, looked at why Facebook and other social network services are “so successful.” The authors found that it might be because of their “ability to induce positive emotional experiences.” The article uses dense scientific language, of course, but you might find this description interesting in light of what science says such experiences can do for us (and our children): “Positive emotions promote discovery of novel and creative actions, ideas and social bonds, which in turn build that individual’s personal resources; ranging from physical and intellectual resources, to social and psychological resources. Importantly, these resources function as reserves that can be drawn on later to improve the odds of successful coping and survival.”

That suggests two things about social media to me: 1) that, while of course we know social network sites can be places where social aggression occurs – like school and anywhere else human interaction happens – they’re also places where resilience can develop for greater safety and social literacy, and 2) society has weighted its discussion about social media on the negative side. For other evidence on the positive side of the social-media balance, check out Larry’s article, and you’ll find more in Dr. Hampton’s.

Related links & further signs

  • From Pew/Internet: “Social networking sites & our lives”
  • “How social networks can be protective”
  • “A (digital) return to village life?”
  • “Cyberbullying and … second chances?”
  • “Only sometimes ‘along together’ in the same room”
  • “Survival of the most cooperative?”
Share Button

Filed Under: Research Tagged With: Facebook, Keith Hampton, Pew Internet, Social Media, social media research

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Social media more like medieval than mass media: Example - NetFamilyNews.org | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    February 28, 2014 at 5:06 pm

    […] “Growing signs social media are good for us” […]

    Reply
  2. Aggregated extortion, digital footprints' dark side & second chances | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    February 25, 2014 at 4:21 pm

    […] “Growing signs social media are good for us” […]

    Reply
  3. Mobile parenting 2.0 | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    April 27, 2013 at 8:40 pm

    […] “Growing signs social media are good for us” […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach
  • ChatGPT for media literacy training
  • Future safety: Content moderators and digital grassroots justice
  • Mental health 2023, Part 1: Youth on algorithms
  • Where did my Twitter go? And other end-of-2022 notes

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.