Lately I've been thinking a lot about public libraries and their use of social networking sites in their work with children and young adults, and because I'm feeling lazy right now, I just want to list some ideas I've had in this regard Martin Luther style. I suppose I just have 90 more to go.
- The basic concepts behind Web 2.0 and social networking sites particularly have the potential to radically democratize media and communications. However, because of the fact that most of these technologies have been bought up by enormous corporations, the profit motive overrides any other social concern.
- As such, social networking sites in their current form are just massive data-mining operations to acquire information about kids’ cultural interests and consumer preferences in order to sell products to them. This is insidious and evil.
- Through these sites, corporations take our precious social bonds and friendships and transform them into a means of making money. This is also insidious and evil.
- Public libraries, as institutions fundamentally concerned with non-commercial ends such as educating the people to participate in a free and democratic society, should not uncritically embrace such technologies in their work, especially with children and young adults.
- Someone needs to create social networking and Web 2.0 tools in a non-profit, open source format that they will not sell off to Google, Yahoo, Fox or some other conglomerate. Until then, I suppose public librarians will be forced to make use of tools such as MySpace or Facebook while also informing young library users that through these sites, companies are using them as marketing tools.
Young adult librarians interested in providing media literacy resources to their users (and anyone else interested in these issues) should check out Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People, by Anne Elizabeth Moore.
3 comments:
I found your blog! And I'm gonna read that Hey Kidz book. I am also leery of pushing the 2.0 social networking stuff on the teens at my branch, especially when I see how un-savvy most of them are about the Internet. We're having a myspace workshop at Flatbush for Teen Tech Week, which will include my own cautionary tales of social networking lecture. We'll see how it goes!
Why not look into using Ning or Drupal? Both open source and not owned by ass holes--yet. Plus they're customizable and commercial free.
I actually just recently learned about Ning, and I'm going to offer a program for teens and kids about it in a couple of weeks. Hopefully I can wean at least some of them off of MySpace or Facebook so that they can use non-commercial software. I hope the people behind those sites don't wind up selling them off to some jerks.
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