The Negative Psychological Effect of Facebook on Children

Do you ever wonder what kind of deep permanent damage Facebook, and the internet in general, is doing to children? That would be an interesting longitudinal study.

After watching The Social Network, and just recently reading Ronn Torossian‘s take on “Is The Internet Written in Ink?” it got me thinking about what this means for future generations.

Unfortunately I don’t have answers, but a few interesting scenarios are bouncing around in my brain. Particularly, how will the perceived notion of permanent reputation damage be viewed by children in their experimental stages of life.

As kids it was our job to make stupid mistakes as a way of experimentation, learning, and growth. At times we were mean and teased, but then we learned to be caring. We were insecure and fought, until we became brave. We were complete jackasses, until we learned to be sophisticated enough to be civil.

That’s fine, that’s what kids do, that’s how we all learned. However, what if there was a strict realistic expectation that whatever dumb thing came out of your mouth in 5th grade, would be blogged by Johnny when he got home, and thus your permanent reputation would be ingrained in internet history.

Three of several scenarios that I see:

The Silent Devil

A child grows up in fear of making the wrong moves. This child does not learn the lessons that come with the mistakes. The one skill that they master is how to hide their thoughts and actions from their family and friends, for fear of being written up on the net. They grow through life silently nurturing their inner daemons, while putting out a front that’s not really themselves.

The Ruined Rep

The other child dismisses the notion of public relations and goes on as children always have. Has a lot of good days and bad days, plays hard, speaks what is on his mind, and doesn’t worry about being written into internet history. He says a lot of things he regrets, learns from his mistakes, becomes an excellent guy, but unfortunately is scarred by past experiences and can never get a job because everyone of his potential employers always googles his name with the word asshole beside it to see just how many people he pissed off.

The Super Generation

Perhaps it doesn’t really take stupid mistakes to know and do the right thing. Perhaps the watchful eye will induce some sort of Hawthorne effect, where children are happy doing the right thing under a watchful eye. They’re able to document their progress, make incremental improvements, and take themselves to a level that even the most fanatical journal keeper of our generation is not able to harness of themselves.

So what will become of these future generations? The ones without the luxury to make mistakes in private? What’s your opinion? What other scenarios can you think of?

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http://www.timelessinformation.com Armen Shirvanian

Hi Alex.

I have sometimes thought of this material regarding how the current young generation is dealing with much more being kept than the previous generation. Also, I looked up that Hawthorne effect because I had not known of it.

I like that you have presented three viable scenarios for how it effects these younger individuals. I would like to think that the majority will go through “The Super Generation” route, and thus go a more compelling direction earlier on in life, seeing that those who are meticulous about their reputation or achievements get much more reward. I have to say that there are certainly some who will go through the “Ruined Rep” path because their odd activity will be recorded and shown over and over through video, or recounted through text in some way.

Knowing that what you do is likely to be captured for people to see sure does have an effect on how much risk you will take, so that’s not so good for this younger generation.
Daniel

Hi Alex,

I think there is a fourth catagory future generations may fall into as it can already be seen by those who use social networking sites at present, this is a premis built on the deindividualisation of society due to social networking.

I view it as a sort of increased relience placed upon social recognision and, for lack of a better word, attention by ones peers and a type of insecurity that comes with it. It has been my observation over the last few months that more and more people have begun posting status updates on such minute and normal aspects of everyday life and also, at the other end of the spectrum, those matters that were once very personal like family troubles or relationship issues etc.

It is my belief that a religious use of any social network such as Facebook, Myspace etc will cause people to become less self-relient due to this increased need for social recognision and/or attention, thus creating a social enviroment whereby one strives to fit social norms and expectations (more aggresivly than at present), hence my use of the terms insecurity and deindividualisation.
http://www.alexshalman.com Alex Shalman

Awesome points guys.

Daniel, I agree that this might cause people to be more socially reliant. On the other hand, I can see how people that don’t have access to anyone near them, can get the attention they need and otherwise wouldn’t by connecting with people a bit further away. This might help them to solve problems they otherwise couldn’t, and positively contribute to their life. Can go either way.