The economist is running an Oxford-style debase on the following proposition:
Here's Ewan McIntosh's pro argument and here is Michael Bugeja's con argument.
Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.
Teenagers are very curious beings, they always want to be surprised and stimulated. No matter how many playstations you may give them there is nothing like the prospect of human contact and Wii has understood it. What are others doing? how are they doing it? -- Teenagers don't meet a lot of people, specially in westernized fear cultures, so the physical interpersonal appeal is very prized.
The vast majority of social networks allow kids to establish a very
strong mental image of their existing physical network, providing some
rudimentary tools to reinforce the relationships within the established
network. The mobile has always done exactly this with tools even more
rudimentary, take SMS, but more effective because they are sustained by
an address-book of REAL people and a reality of immediate physical
consequence.
Almost every teenagers aged 14 carries a mobile, you see them texting
in class, you watch them catalyze and sustain the interpersonal links
they have, all of which tend to migrate to their phone's address book
where they are attributed different ringtones whilst moving up and down
on the speed-dial list depending on importance (which for teenagers
varies daily :).
Social networks also allow you to go beyond your social circle, to
explore beyond the classroom. If a kid does karate she is able to
explore the social networks that that activity and people comprehend.
Kids welcome every chance they get to go beyond the boundaries of their
physical social networks, of their address books. The holiday flirt;
the trip to the mall where other kids from other schools hang out; the
cousins who live far away...
Looking at the plethora of existing web based social networks one
realizes they all accommodate for this. I've had many kids just give me
their Myspace nicks. 'Check me out', rather than a phone number. It's
less compromising and at the same time richer.
[Now imagine these kids could say, take my Mekwa for a ride. Take part of me on your mobile, surprise me.]
Most SNS have sold out their own structure [address book/profile] to an eager market. Peer-to-peer learning swings the argument for SNSs, however the tools that SNS provide are not very pedagogic in the classical sense of the word. Even if you take a reality of SNS as structures that empower 3rd party companies to create and distribute their applications, only a small number of these apps is really about learning, most is just about entertainment... there is however no reason to think that the government should not invest in facebook or myspace educational apps... Why not get kids to do their homework on a facebook app...
Kids are eager to learn new things, meet new people and go places they can only see on TV. They start with sleep overs and eventually, social network permitting, end up on a friend's couch in the south of Spain. There is educational value in this as well. SNS must understand that at their core is not a market-place but an idea. They are nothing more than address-books with lots of embedded features -- which is something in their own right very cool and powerful. We either revisit the address-book/market place balance (political issue) or we work on recreating the idea behind the address-book (my choice).
picture by Ex-pat