By Claire Gibson
OK, so I’m probably not in the right age group any more for ‘this sort of thing’, but…
I do have a MySpace page, which I set up mainly out of a combination of boredom and curiosity – however, I have no desire to make it my main form of communication between my friends (of whom in the MySpace world I seem to have pitifully few - aw shucks). This is in contrast to the ex-students of my best mate (who’s just given up teaching) - her profile is full of messages from 16-18 year olds, and a quick look at one of their pages reveals hundreds of ‘friends’, instant messaging each other constantly and posting in-jokes and kooky comments on each other's pages.
I suppose the equivalent for me growing up would have been the first AOL chatrooms that I had access to on my dad’s computer. They were quite fun… though thinking back on it now, one of the characters I met online turned out to be very shady indeed, which put me off pretty much from that moment onwards - yuck.
Taking all this into account - as well as the story earlier this week that MySpace has been hit by another security threat - I started seriously wondering what does keep people so hooked on it.
However, a story on the BBC about the International Telecommunications Union’s Youth Forum caught my eye today, and got me thinking about how social networking could mean a lot more for young people in other parts of the world.
The idea - described in the article - that someone working in a remote village, cut off from major cities and transportation and earning only a fifth of the average salary in the UK, could access a British university education over the internet is surely a compelling enough reason for people to keep pushing for quality internet access across the world.
The digital divide is slowly being bridged, with social networking starting to be used as a tool to allow cross-cultural dialogue and understanding as well as the promotion of tourism and product exportation.
It’s a far cry from the essentially frivolous activity it appears to be in Britain today – and as far as I’m concerned, it certainly beats yet another Friend Request from some dodgy ‘not-quite-porn’ MySpace user. LOL…
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