Being social, and uplugged
Published 3:07 pm Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Some students at Shorewood and Shorecrest high schools are challenging their classmates to participate in a radical experiment: to see if they can give up social networks for a week.
“Social networks,” of course, used to refer to broader human interaction, but now means electronic social interaction.
Brave students who choose to participate must communicate face-to-face with others or by landline telephones, Shoreline Area News reported this week. This means no Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, no games, chatting or texting. E-mail is acceptable only when necessary for work or school. OMG is right.
This is a great experiment and the students and teachers behind it deserve a hand. Go ahead and imagine the “thumbs up” logo and be the first of your friends to recommend this. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it, because the social experiment has its own Facebook page. Will it be taken down on Dec. 6, the day the experiment starts? Only a non-participant will be able to check.
(It is no doubt a fine Facebook page explaining the students’ experiment, but it must remain unexamined because we are participating in the experiment early. Which is to say, we can’t remember our password, and refuse to change it to a new one yet one more time.)
It’s telling and sweet, however, that in the face of a weeklong social networking drought, the video students at both schools who are sponsoring the experiment will document the whole thing. Participants may not be able to post their pictures and their feelings as they are used to doing, but the documenters will document every moment for them.
Of course the experimenters had to reach their potential participants through social networking. How else? So the Shorecrest students created a very humorous and entertaining video, called the “Social Experiment Movie Trailer” (it can be seen on YouTube), challenging classmates to join the project.
(Student 1: “This social experiment is really an eye-opener.”
Student 2: “Yeah, but not everyone can handle it.”)
The video explains that students are being asked to go way back in time and live like they had been thrown back to the mid-1990s — “our chance to see the world of yesterday.” (Thankfully, no references to covered wagons.)
The experiment, in part, is to remind students not to take technological advances for granted, and to remember that there is a “real world” outside of social networks. Again, this is a noble experiment, and all the more admirable that it’s coming from teenagers. Parents and teachers are also invited to give up their social networking for a week, another fine idea. Talk it up.
