Presentation for CONUL Advisory Committee on Information Literacy - Annual Information Literacy Seminar, May 28th 2009, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. 2009-05-28.

1. Your laptop may put you in
touch with millions. But if you
are alone in reality, in reality,
you’re alone.
Catherine Blyth, ‘The Art of
Conversation’

7. Social network sites
• Social networking sites are changing
children’s brains, resulting in selfish
and attention deficient young people.
• Social network sites risk infantilising
the mid-21st century mind, leaving it
characterised by short attention spans,
sensationalism, inability to empathise
and a shaky sense of identity.

8. Social network sites
• Conducting personal relationships through a
screen could be related to a rise in cases of
both ADHD and autism.
• We are enthusiastically embracing the
possible erosion of our identity through
social networking sites since those that use
such sites can lose a sense of where they
themselves finish and where the outside
world begins.
• Real conversation in real time may give way to
sanitised and easier screen dialogues.

9. Baroness Susan
Greenfield CBE
• Distinguished neuroscientist
• Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology
• Director of the Royal Institute
• Chancellor of Heriot Watt University

10. Social network sites
• People’s health may be harmed by social
networking sites.
• Lack of real personal interaction may
have negative biological effects, such as
upsetting immune systems, hormone
levels, artery functions and mental
functions.
• Ironically, they are playing a role in
making people more isolated.

11. • Aric Stigman, Fellow of the Royal Society of
Medicine
• Biologist, journal of the Institute of Biology
• ‘fantastic tools, but balance is all wrong-national
debate needed’

12. JISC found that most students surveyed resented the
idea of academics interfering with their social space.
• OCLC Report
• Online Environment
Report (UCD) • Respondents felt it
• How useful is the was not the role of
Library page in the Library and many
Facebook and in Directors felt it was
Second Life?
not a priority staff-
• Responses muted,
negative, dismissive. wise and money- wise.

13. Issues
• The Digital Divide
– Higher education in a Web 2.0 world JISC
• Management issues.
– Staff time in social network areas
• Control (Education Guardian)
– Operating in forum not owned by
university but by company which may use
the information for commercial use’
– Facebook today? Second Life tomorrow?
Where to put resources, assessment?

14. Security & Privacy
• Security Issues
– The more I upload the details of my existence,
even in the form of random observations and
casual location updates, the more I worry about
giving away too much. It's one thing to share
intimacies person-to-person. But with a
community? Creepy. (S.Levy, Wired)
• Ownership of content
– Facebook, forever, even after account deleted.
• 10 times more prone to virus attack than email.
• Hunting ground for sexual predators.

15. Twitter
• It's something like a collection of personal blogs, only
each entry is limited to 140 characters, so you end up
with a vertical stack of bite-size, artificially flavored
communication snacks. They're oddly compelling while
remaining staunchly unsatisfying. (L.Sjoberg, Wired)
“Twittering stems from a lack of identity”
(Oliver James, clinical psychologist)
“We are the most narcissistic age ever” “Using
Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless
people recognise you, you cease to exist
(Dr David Lewis, cognitive neuropsychologist )

16. Second Life
It is country club on a computer. Like-minded people who
share a class, literacy and technological competence can
converse with people like themselves

19. Hikikomori, (social withdrawal)
• Japan's Lost Generation
In a world filled with virtual reality, the
country's youth can't deal with the real thing.
• "Socially withdrawn" people find it extremely
painful to communicate with the outside
world, and thus they turn to the tools that
bring virtual reality into their closed rooms.
• ‘Its possible to have real relationships,
purely online.’ (Chinese survey)

20. ‘People in general do not
willingly read, if they have
anything else to amuse them.’
(Samuel Johnson)

21. There is no frigate like
a book
To take us lands away
(Emily Dickinson)

23. • Fragmented sense of
time
• Reduced attention span
• Impatience with
sustained inquiry
• Divorce from the past
• Language erosion
Social networking is leading to a blurring
of virtual reality and reality and assaulting
our economy, our culture and our values.
The moral fabric of our society is being
unraveled by Web 2.0

24. Online Social networks & teaching
& learning
• We need to debate the serious issues
raised by some aspects of Web 2.0 in
our Libraries before embracing it
unreservedly. We owe it to the past,
and to the future.