Dear Parents,
Last night I read an article entitled Virtual Friendship. The article written by John Muether compared friendships in our virtual world to the traditionally defined face to face friendships we grew up with. Here are some excerpts and some of my thoughts for parents and students to ponder on the topics of friendship.
I recognize as a school leader that friendship is the number one factor to a student’s success in high school. If a student is or feels isolated, lonely, or troubled over friendship issues, good luck getting much out of him / her academically. Flipping that around, if a student has great school friends who know him/ her, friends who encourage, listen and laugh with you, school is a great place to be.
So where does Facebook fit in? Does your child Facebook? Does he have 8 friends or 800 friends? How much time does she spend on Facebook? Have you accepted Facebook as the new reality for friendship, or does the whole social network site annoy you?
I have a facebook page and I spend all my time confirming friends. Occasionally when I do read posts, it disturbs me to see adults making comments on the quality of their morning coffee, or the fact that they cannot seem to get their kids out of bed. Does Facebook focus on exhibitionism? As Mueller puts it, “ Your colonoscopy this morning is really not my business.”
Does Facebook lack genuine attempts at friendship? Parents, consider that hundreds of Facebook friends in your child’s life might just create a false illusion of friendship.
As Maggie Johnson says, “ Facebook friends do not increase the number of folk to whom one is prepared to donate a kidney.” Does Facebook enhance your child’s social life or is it your child’s social life?
I would encourage you to talk about friendship with your teen, when they are ready to talk. Try to define together what a quality friendship these days might look like. Consider that classic hymn title, “ What a friend we have in Jesus”. Could it be that a friend who is willing to make sacrifices for you, for no personal gain, a friend who forgives you for ignoring him, a friend who loves like a brother might be more deserving of our time than the time we spend updating our profile, our status and our photo albums on Facebook?
Mr. Dykstra
I really appreciate all your comments about the dangers of substituting face-to-face relationship with our technologically "advanced" and popular new forms of relating. I have had concerns about the potential abuses of communication technologies for quite some time. I am shocked that so many students, even at SCCHS, participate in behaviors via Facebook/Twitter/etc. and cell phones that are actually ILLEGAL, let alone immoral and/or unwholesome, and they seem to have no awareness of such. I applaud you for taking a strong stand even though you are aware of the possible negative feedback from others. It is hard to row against the current of popular culture, but row we must with the help of Christ. Should we continue to view these cultural malignancies as benign, we will end up experiening death in the end--death of genuine relationship which is essential to the health and wholeness of every person. God created us for REAL relationship, not virtual relationship.
ReplyDeleteAs for our family, our kids rarely complain any more about the limits we impose on all technology in our household. We are not extremists. We permit Facebook and cell phones and parent-approved shows/movies. As kids get older, it is harder to monitor but not impossible. We monitor. We also talk a lot about the benefits and dangers of all technology, expressing our love for our kids and desire that they pursue healthy lifestyles and make healthy choices for their own good. We are not afraid to impose appropriate consequences when violations of family rules occur. We work at setting an example for REAL relationship by spending a lot of time with our teens talking and doing things we all enjoy. If kids have enjoyable times with their parents and watch their parents having enjoyable times with their adult friends, the "real" relationship role-modeling tends to be adopted. My belief is that we ALL crave REAL relationship and when we get it, no substitute will suffice.
Heather Johnson
You might enjoy the following link.
ReplyDeletehttp://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2010/05/uva-footballs-facebook-recruiting-violation-highlights-challenges-of-social-media.html
Chuck Adams
Thanks Heather and Chuck for reading!
ReplyDelete