Everywhere and Nowhere

is the title to a recent article in the Economist (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880936&CFID=16372671&CFTOKEN=2db6454d1e4410b6-E2749052-B27C-BB00-0129AE0EB9D19200) about the future ubiquity of online social life. I don't read the Economist often; however, I saw a link to this article in a daily post that I receive about youth and media usage. I wonder how our life will be different in 3, 5, and 10 years from now in terms of our use of online activities.

A year ago I didn't blog. My daughter already knows at some level what email is and she's only 2. What will individuals, particularly youth, be doing with online activities in the coming years? A researcher from Forrester Research quoted in the article in the Economist suggests that there won't be a variety of different social networking sites, groups, etc. that are hard to link together. They will be anywhere and everywhere and seamlessly integrated. That's a nice idea in many ways. A friend of mine (and a blogger who inspired me to start blogging) just had a baby. She sent out emails to different groups, posted some pix on her blog, and posted a lot more pix on her Facebook page. Now, if I didn't have access to the Facebook page, I'd never (well, not as quickly anyway : ) have seen the additional beautiful pix of her new baby and family (thanks R.!).

Perhaps in the future there'll be better linkages so that we don't have to be members of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Flickr, and/or other sites in order to obtain the latest news and notes on our network members. Will that be a good thing or a bad thing?

What do you think? Do you want more seamless integration and availability of information about members of your social networks? And, for others to have the availability of this information about you?

In The News

I was interviewed via phone yesterday morning for a story a reporter is doing on social networking sites (SNS - ex. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.). She had looked at some profiles on Bebo and was surprised at the level of profanity and the nature of some of the pictures on this SNS. I'm not all that familiar with Bebo, so couldn't really comment much on that SNS specifically. She was also interested in the impact of children viewing profanity and other things on these sites.

One of the things the reporter wondered was whether there was an age that was too young for children to use SNS. That is a good question. There are now so many different sites available and so many ways to form networks related to particular interests/topics on any given site that they could potentially be interesting to children of almost all ages who are capable of understanding how to use a computer.

So, I wonder, at what age will you let your children use social networking sites? My 22 month old already loves playing with the computer when we're on it. I'm not ready for her to have her own website or blog yet, but maybe soon : )

I wonder what the future will hold for the youth of today in terms of technology and the social impacts of technology. Any thoughts on this topic?