Digital Danger: Is Our Online Activity Damaging Us?

I've just returned to recreational interwebbing after a couple months away from it.

The break was great.

I felt no deprivation and actually found time to do a lot of other things.

I dont Facebook or Twitter so I don't know what I am missing I guess.....

Regarding the whole article, the commentator debunks the opinion of the author quite a bit. I found the author's opinions (as paraphrased by the commentator) to be pretty intuitive.

I see one of the greatest dangers of personal technology in being that people are losing their ability to interact with people in socially acceptable ways. There is much more incivility being expressed because people are basically anonymous and aren't really accountable for what they say.

People can slander and malign anyone on the new electronic "bathroom wall", and it gets wide exposure eventhough there isn't truth in the statements or accusations. Because people read it they believe it. People for the most part are gullible (they haven't learned to think for themselves at home or in school) and they believe whatever they read without finding out the credibility of the person posting the information.

Instead of people, young and older alike, dealing with reality, they are using their electronic pacifiers to escape what they should be mature enough to handle. They wind up broke and dissatisfied with life and wonder what the he// happened to my life? Benjamin Franklin said "most men die at age 25 and wait till 65 to get buried."

People then return to the workforce or business and have trouble dealing with the normal stresses of life and either fight or flee because they have never learned to work through the tough issues of life in a healthy way. The downward spiral then moves to their kids and so on.

Turn off the idiot box (TV), put the electronic games away (which require no personal interaction skills with other people), put down the phone and call someone so they can hear the excitement in your voice, play a game with your spouse and kids, begin enjoying life again.

"... people are losing their ability to interact with people ..."

At a local restaurant my wife and I watched as a young couple separately texted other people whilst waiting to be seated at a table. The pair did not interact with each other at all - not a single word was spoken between them the whole time. My wife and I naturally wondered "Why bother going out together if you're just going to text others? They're not 'together', save physically, so what was the point? They'd probably have a far better rapport if they texted each other from separate restaurants!"

Either social skills are changing, or what is meant by 'social skills' is changing. Ones which actually involve speaking to someone appear to be in decline, as do written ones involving the expression of one's thoughts in more than one, two or three monosyllabic words. To wit:

Word LOL ROFL LMAO Snap! Hurr Durrp WTF!

On FB the popularity of the expression, "f**k you!" is at an all-time high btw.

Oops. Almost forgot: BTW.

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"... in socially acceptable ways. There is much more incivility being expressed ..."

THE One Reason I no longer have a Facebook account.

I've never encountered so much hostility online as I did on Facebook. Not just directed at me personality, but from people to each other. To me it felt like being in the middle of a gigantic, trigger-happy firing squad, all milling about in wait of some hapless fool to perforate on a whim. I found this incredible. Almost scary.

Whilst on FB I went by a pseudonym for my own safety (and privacy, which I value very highly). I was effectively anonymous but without appearing so, as my pseudonym was a real name, just not my own. I wasn't anonymous so that I could fire salvos at others from safely behind my keyboard (such are called Keyboard Kommandos, among other things), but to protect myself from the really rabid and abundant lunatics - some of whom turned out to live fairly close to my location. I quickly found it all quite discouraging and so I closed my Facebook account permanently.

Later I opened an account on Google+, as the 'atmosphere' there seemed far more civil and the denizens much more intelligent and mature, on average, than those I encountered on FB. With much less muck to wade through, I found on G+ more substance to my liking - and more quickly, too.

There are people on G+, for instance, who can tell you in (accurate) detail exactly what 'CP violations' are and how experiments with kaons relate to proving/disproving the validity of 'non-local realism' as it relates to quantum entanglement. Physics. Real physics - and Real Physicists. I'm sure they're on FB, too. Well, not sure, really, but I am willing to admit to the possibility of the odds being non-zero, given Facebook's membership of nearly one billion. If you're familiar with the Drake Equation, you know what I'm talking about.

By way of analogy, looking for someone like a Real Physicist on Facebook is kind of like looking for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare at the city dump. I'm sure that if one picked the right city and the right dump at the right time, one might indeed find such a work, but why bother with all that when it can be had from the library just down the street?

Still, like Facebook, Google+ leaves one pining for communication with real flesh-and-blood human beings - and ones who aren't compulsively fishing for '+1s' or 'Likes' by means of posting poorly-executed photos of various body parts (such as a nose) along with the query "Ain't I Sexy?"

"No, biotch, doing that here makes you look like an complete idiot, quite honestly. Try Facebook."

As for the Original Question: "Is Our Online Activity Damaging Us?" I myself can't say whether it is or not, but it's certainly changing what we're writing about, yes?

I just watched a documentary this weekend which paints a picture of a much larger problem. It is entitled, "Consuming Kids." Media (of all types) influence on people, now, begins at birth. That part of the documentary is interwoven into this larger picture. (And I'm not arguing for a "nanny" state. I do see this as a problem that "markets" haven't solved, but amplified.)