In Semi-Reluctant Defense of Facebook

On Friday, a wicked storm blew through our area, but Saturday night, the skies were clear and the humidity was down and as I sat with an assorted collection of friends and family on a dock by a lake after a wonderful cookout, a subject came up that is probably on the hot plate of families all over America.

Frankly, I wasn't looking for any debate, especially this debate, preferring a peaceful kickback with good company, cigars and port. What I was silently pondering was the counterpoint between the port I was sipping and excellent Cubano I'd lit and the clever response I'd make to this guy on FB, obviously an inhabitant of another continent, who cracked wise about Americans obsessing about the weather. Said dude said, just you wait, winter with all its rain and cold are just around the corner. He obviously didn't grasp that here in NNE America it is record-breaking rainy/cold and it's bloody summer.

But my reverie was interrupted by somebody saying, people, especially teenagers should just turn off their computers and get out and interact with each other. In "real life." Ah, the camouflage was off the digital divide and the Luddites were marching, with fixed bayonets. Their rallying cry:

Facebook, "Great corruptor of youth and destroyer of health, civility and "real social discourse."

Or not.

As the last standing digital partisan in this upscale crowd of lawyers, financial analysts, tech workers, investors, teachers and healthcare workers, I was pulled into a trench war in reluctant defense of my own usage and that of teens. My assignment was to hopefully raise the awareness of a group of parents, good, intelligent people all, about the true pros and cons of social media.

The curve on all new tech trends comes up fast, each faster than the previous one, so there is really no shame in professing tech-vertigo. But those on the dock with the staunchest opinions weren't informed by awareness, i.e. actually being on the site and using it and their arguments were so categorical and absolute that they demanded a reasoned response. Where there is a little shame, IMH, is judging without knowing.

FB IS a time waster. Sure, but so are a lot of things.

At first glance, it is easy to dismiss FB as a trivial time-waster. People write about the yummy beef burrito with chipotle sauce that they had for lunch. They write that they're stuck in airports. They take quizzes to determine if they're dateable or which Mafia boss they are most like. I mean, really! A lot it is crap. It's like being on an old-fashioned telephone party line with most of the jabber being nonsense. Hmm, a potential through line? Let's put it on hold for a moment and return to the non-virtual lakeside debate.

The argument that I responded to first, was the new technology = decline of civility argument.

This one is hardest to counter, because there is always an element of truth to it. Social pundits at the turn of the previous century slammed the "yellow journalists" for their lack of decorum. Newspapers decried the telephone and radio as infernal instruments. Radio took on movies. Movies took on television. Television fought the net and they all won. They're all still around. Granted, the fishwraps are on life support, but the good ones will pull through once they figure out how to save trees and international journalists.

Samuel Johnson said that "Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss." Yet social commentators from the days of the Athenian republic have been decrying the loss of civil discourse in the proceeding generation. By mathematical progression alone, this would have reduced Johnson's generation to Yahoos and our generation to snarling brutes. Yet the argument remains evergreen and is levied by elders against every new generation or medium embraced by that generation.

Civility is both a fluid and a static concept. There was a time in this country (which still exists in some cultures) when women would be considered rude, just appearing in public without a male escort. Aristotle believed that virtuous behavior had to be voluntary and that civility is a form of virtuous behavior.

· Treating people well

· Speaking politely

· Telling the truth

Any generation that decries the breakdown of civility in its youth, must first examine itself, what of these virtues it has passed down or failed to pass down to the next.

I'd argue that it is never the role of the new medium to lead the charge of civility. That role is reserved for the oldest of media, the discourse that takes place at the "kitchen hearth." The lessons of the hearth are no more the role of technology than sex ed is the role of Playboy. Remember Playboy? People bring what they've learned to the communications tools they use, so you can hardly blame the tool for the poor choices of its users.

But I'd also posit that communication, as a human activity, is a virtue, more valued than making money or war. In a democratic society, even poorly done communication is better than none at all. A million twittering Iranians can't be wrong. Our own founding fathers valued free speech above all other freedoms or virtues and there's no doubt that if they'd had cellphones they'd have tweeted from the docks of Boston to the shores of Yorktown.

"How much time do you spend on FB?"

One individual asked this in a somewhat hostile tone, expecting, I think, that the answer would be 'hours and hours daily', an a priori assumption that would have undermined my credibility, with the insinuation that I'm just one of those pathetic time-wasters who are so addicted to their computers that they've lost all sense of perspective frittering away in other people's trivia. My answer is about 10 minutes per log-on. Well, this individual countered, I work, and I don't have time ... which I'm sorry, is the refrain that unengaged parents have used for generations to not be bothered to find out what their kids are thinking about or doing.

I hear this argument far too much from my "on the digital cusp" generation.

It basically translates thus:

• "It's all crap and I don't care" or
• "I haven't figured out how to do it yet and rather than take the modest time and admit I need a little help, I'd rather assume the high moral ground and paint those with skills as "people I am better than and don't want to be like anyway."
• "I'm too important. "

I have a clue for such folks. It isn’t all crap. Something important is happening here and though I can't state with certainty what it will morph into, I can tell you that you are missing the boat. You aren’t better or smarter for your standoffishness. You and your work aren't any more or less important than this. Put your prejudices in the back drawer and check it out. It isn't as hard as you think and you may even enjoy yourself.

You don’t need FB to be rude

Another individual began his argument (as he always does) with the aggressive suppositions that "You don't get it." "You don't understand" and "You're not listening." This is a familiar three-toothed saw, as this person consistently assumes that if I don't agree with him, that I've not listened to him. (His) logic dictates that either he believes his opinions are facts, or that the force of his arguments are so incredibly compelling, that merely listening to them will bring instant agreement or that I'm so incredibly stupid or stubborn that I wouldn't know a compelling argument if it hit me on the head. None of these assertions are accurate or terribly polite, for that matter. Perhaps my response should have been to point this needlessly demeaning rhetoric out, but I shut up, sipped my port and listened to him describe how a personal connection was maligned by another on a website, that people who use email to communicate don't understand the proper means of discourse in a "real" office" or are too lazy and stupid to have a face to face conversation and that he simply won't allow his children to ever fall into this trap. Let's line these assertions up one by one.

I disagree with this individual on some of his strongly held beliefs and in such cases, no amount of listening will change my mind any more than listening to me will change his. That doesn’t mean I lack the capacity to comprehend his opinions, even when he states them as “facts.” It merely means I take his opinions as opinions, which leaves me free to agree or disagree.

Sure, it sucks that his colleague was maligned on a website, but that perpetrator could have mailed a flier, gotten on the phone or on a soapbox in the town square to spew her dirt. Yes, the web makes dysfunctional spews easier to launch, but now the argument is one of relativisms, not absolutes.

If a technology’s direct and primary role is to do harm, (like guns) then you ban or heavily restrict its use. But if its primary role is good and useful and harm comes tangentially, then you manage the tangential harm and throw the bathwater out, not the baby. I found it most shocking that he was so "anti-email" given that he recently installed a FIOS account to work from home and be closer to his children. I'm assuming that most of those business transactions take place via email. In "You don't get it's" or any other office, email is a far better way than face-to-face speech to maintain records of who said what to whom and the progress of a project. In my world, email is the life's blood of my and much larger corporations' business. Last year, I used it to deliver online courseware for several major corporations, for clients all over the country that I never met face to face.

Finally "You don't get it's" children who are going to be protected from this e-onslaught-- are very young and I plan to revisit this conversation when they become teenagers. We'll see who is listening and understanding and who is not and how effective this Khomeinish ban of his has been.

There's not space enough to describe all the useful ways I use the various web outlets to foster my hopefully polite and efficient connections with business and personal contacts.

Let's stick to the "worst offender," the dreaded Facebook. My initial motivation was to track my teenage child's usage, because I was, as I always am, concerned for his privacy, online and off. I let him have an account only after he promised to "friend me." He used some colorful language on one of his posts and I used it as a teachable moment. I learned that he had a girlfriend through his Facebook page. I learned that they'd broken up. These are the sorts of painfully intimate things I'd never discussed with my own parents, face-to-face or otherwise, so I understood my son's reticence.

I have a useful window into my teen and his friends' daily lives that I would not have otherwise.

Anybody who parents a teen knows how important any channel of communication with teens is. Kids like mine collect hundreds of "friends" and while only a fraction of them are "real," let's recognize that in the hyper-frenzied social world of teenagers quantity is more important (to them) than quality and having friends of any sort is super-critical. I don't judge. If the kid is smart and well-informed (by their parents and peers), they'll figure out soon enough what and who counts. I don't see this specter of isolated children sitting in the dark, being stalked and pretending to be friends with fake friends. I see young people learning to use tools that will inform and enrich their lives.

Suddenly I thought, wow, this is cool, maybe there is something untrivial about this social networking thing after all.

Shortly after I opened my account, several interesting things happened.

• Many of my former ITVA colleagues from all over the country started signing up and it has been over ten years since I've communicated with them. Now I see some of their names, faces and areas of interest on a daily basis.
• One of them needed production support so I passed on a job lead to a colleague.
• Then I learned my niece's daughter had persistent ear infections. I encouraged her to seek an audiology consult, because we encountered the same situation and ear infections in the very young affect speech development.
• I started promoting my fundraising for the American Diabetes Association and got a friend from halfway across the country to pitch in.
• Part of my business marketing strategy is to post headlines for this, my business blog and get responses via FB.
• One of my friends blogs professionally about food and wellness and her snappy well-crafted headlines draw my attention.
• My brother, a professional story-teller and playwright, is using FB as inspiration for a new theatrical production.
• A friend’s sister did a daily countdown before the two sisters would be reunited. Not terribly important (to me), yet it was sweet and revealing and got me thinking hard about the nature of sibling love and the distances modern society imposes on loving family.

All my FB friends are real friends and family.

Maybe you be-”friend” anybody who comes along. That’s your option and you won’t find me judging you for it. And yes, while our kids and many of our friends and family write the most trivial things, on occasions, there are nuggets buried in the hay, little sparks of human connections that don't necessarily rise to the level of a call or letter (email or otherwise). FB, with its user-centric interface allows you to scan quickly and comment where and when you deem it worth your while. Then there are Plaxo and LinkedIn for keeping up with business contacts, keeping my email contact list fresh and there's no denying that they can be very useful for business purposes. Smart users balance their time on these online tools, maintain appropriate contact through appropriate channels and expand, not contract their worlds. These contacts are as "real" as the people who send and receive them. Common sense dictates balance, not exclusion.

If your kid is getting fat, spending four hours a day on his computer, instead of making "real" friends or doing his homework, is it the computer's fault?

No, it's yours. Paul Simon said "Every generation throws its hero up the pop charts." So if the next generation's use of social networking is so dysfunctional in the long run, chances are good that their own children will rebel against them and start a "back to real" communications trend of their own. I'm cool with that. If it happens, which I doubt, it will be a choice born of experience and informed choice, not ignorance and blind rejection.

Now finally to the REAL downside.

So, with all these positives and whatever novel innovations social networking holds in the near future, what IMH, is the real downside? It can be neatly summed up in the following quote on a page I clicked inadvertently on a couple of days ago.

"Allowing My Birthday Calendar access will let it pull your profile information, photos, your friends' info, and other content that it requires to work."

CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL!!!

What this seemingly innocuous FB permission opens, is a floodgate that takes what you share and who you share it with out of your hands. Read the fine print before you jump on one of these aps. Please!!! But as onerous as this may seem, at least this is the devil you know, for they give you the option. So I decline all those cute, fuzzy FB aps. Sorry, but I won't put your birthday on my FB calendar, give you a hug, friend blessing or teddy bear. I've made my choice and drawn my line. We already live in a world where your every transaction is recorded, archived and sold to corporations who use it to "monetize" their interactions with you. You don't know when and how much it happens, but unless you stuff your cash under a mattress and don't have a SS number, ATM card or credit, you leave a trail a mile wide, each time you "transact."

Your Information/Somebody Else’s Commodity

The most important issue that none of the folks on that dock got, is how what you say, think, buy or sell is mined by people who are looking to sell your information as a commodity. FB poses some privacy issues, but at least they are known and can be managed. What about the hundreds of other times a week your information is aggregated and sent to huge databases to be sold to the highest corporate bidder and you know nothing about it. If you want to get angry at something, if you want to be afraid of something, this is the real bug lurking in the bed. A giant wave of change is washing over us. You can ride it or you can turn your back on it, but you stand a much better chance of not being swamped if you get on the board. The essence of democracy is participation and choice and any technology that expands these options even a little is fine in my book.