A British Child's Social Media Jones
A British Child's Social Media Jones Anne Longfield, children’s commissioner in Great Britain has roundly criticized those methods used by social media moguls to draw children into more time spent with tablets and smart phones on social media outlets.She equates this to ingesting 'junk food' and indicates that like junk food is unhealthy for the body excessive time consumed in social media is unhealthy for the mind.
She views the children as going on social media binges and is admonishing parents to be more proactive in directing those activities of their children during summer breaks from school in an effort to curb the tide of social media excess.
It appears that those children in the 5 to 15 year range are spending 15 hours a week or more online.
Now then, I would pretty much find that far less than I spend online ... but I do not visit social media sites opting instead for news and information from sources I trust and I am very picky.
For example, CNN is out because I don't trust them. I would never indulge a facebook or twitter because let's face it ... it simply doesn't provide any ROI for time spent in my realm of technical support and development.
I no longer require any cultivation of customers and ever since that lady told me how I should be accessible from facebook "like I'm supposed to be" I have shunned any and every social media venue except for my own personal web presence which is visited by those I choose.
I don't need google and it's "buy your position in the search results" and I don' need anybody else offering search engine optimization and such because word of mouth is about the only reference I require for practical intents and purposes.
Were I a struggling young person trying to make it in the world things might be different; but now I feel puzzled when I get those requests to "friend" and such on facebook and linkedin when I simply decline to be there.
Call me old fashioned ... I call it disinterest.
I could have never been one of those problem children described by Ms Longfield in Great Britain. I "took the road less traveled" and "it has made all the difference".
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The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
From Mountain Interval, 1916
Public Domain