|
The Bakersfield Californian Jamie Butow column
Feb 14, 2012 (The Bakersfield Californian - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
With the continuing rise of social media, we're always wondering what it's doing to us. Is it making us more social? Less social? Happier? Angrier? Last week the Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project released another nationwide study looking at the tone of life on social networking sites.
This study examined the views of adults and compared them to findings of a similar study last year examining the views of teenagers.
One of the findings that jumped out at me immediately are the things teens say have happened to them as a result of something posted on an SNS.
I'm saddened to see that 8 percent of teens have gotten into a physical fight, 25 percent have gotten into a face-to-face arguments and 22 percent have ended a friendship because of something posted online.
Overall, 41 percent of teens report having at least one bad experience, while only 26 percent of adults say that about their SNS experience.
As a mom, this scares me. As an online community manager, it's doesn't surprise me.
Aggressive behavior is common. Debates are heated and incredibly personal at times. The trick is to know when to walk away, and that's something I remind people of on a regular basis.
Bullying in schools is becoming all-to common, but as a parent we now have to worry about cyber-bullying, too.
According to the report, adults are more likely than teens to ignore offensive behavior. But still, more than half the adults surveyed said they would say something to an offender.
And here's something that really shocked me: Women are more likely to get involved than men.
A shocking 26 percent of women said they will jump into an aggressive discussion that doesn't involve them, where only 19 percent of men said they will.
While the possibility for things going horribly wrong is there, the biggest news to come from the reports was how social networking sites connects us to one another.
Sixty-one percent of adults said SNS makes them feel closer to another person, and 68 percent say SNS makes them feel good about themselves.
It's an incredibly comprehensive report available for download at http://tinyurl.com/BakoSNSReport.
Grammy chatter
I think I proved Sunday night that I'm not the only one out there who doesn't just sit and watch television.
TV time is also online time for a lot people. During the Grammy Awards show, I posted several questions asking our fans to comment on the live performances.
Boy, did you respond!
We received 102 likes and 67 comments on the performances in a three-hour period.
And who says TV isn't interactive?
Discussions everywhere
As Facebook has evolved, they've added some new features I'm taking more and more advantage of. One of which is the "subscribe" feature.
Since I have a policy of not accepting friend requests from people I don't know on my personal page (http://www.facebook.com/jamiebutow), I created http://www.facebook.com/jamiebutow2 as a place to connect with folks interested in social media news, parenting stuff and other things related to Bakersfield.com.
Over on my personal page, I sometimes start discussions that gain a lot of traction. They aren't always related to things in Kern County or to social media, but they aren't personal and likely have a wide range of interest.
I've added the subscribe feature to that page and have made several of these posts and discussions public.
You can subscribe to the page and comment on the topics.
Adding the subscribe feature to your page is great if you want to publicize something but keep the rest of your page private.
The current topic up for discussion on my page is about the impact local radio personalities have on your decision to tune in or tune out.
Jamie Butow is the community engagement coordinator at Bakersfield.com, and the mom of an active 7-year-old boy who seems to finally be moving on from the Patriots Super Bowl loss. Email her at JButow@Bakersfield.com. Find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/JamieButow and Facebook.com/JamieButow2, Twitter @JamieButow, and on Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Seriously, she's not that hard to track down.
___ (c)2012 The Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Calif.) Visit The
Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Calif.) at www.bakersfield.com Distributed
by MCT Information Services
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
|
TMCnet LOGIN
Webinars
