Skip to main content

Teenage angst

On a regular basis we hear how social networking sites like Facebook are destroying the universe. Apparently, because of them we will soon cease to be able to interact with anyone in person, shortly followed by the withering of the ability to speak. Or some such thing.

I tend to take these tirades with a pinch of salt. It's true that it's easy to waste a lot of time on such websites, but I'm not sure it's any worse for you than vegetating in front of the TV watching I'm a Celebrity, get me out of Strictly Come X-Factor, and certainly if you're in a job where you spend a lot of time alone, like being a writer, Facebook, Twitter and the like offer a lifeline of social involvement that simply wouldn't be there otherwise.

The latest moan is that teenagers are spending too much time in their rooms because of social networking sites. Now, come on. This is hazy memory syndrome. Do the people who proclaim the end of civilization caused by these absent teenagers have no memories of their own teenage years? Do they really believe that they spent all their spare time in the living room, playing Monopoly with Mum, Dad and the young siblings? I certainly spent most of my teenage time at home in my bedroom (or the evil chemical laboratory in the basement, but that's a different story). The difference is that at least today's teenagers are communicating while they're locked away - I didn't have any way to do this from my bedroom. It was monastic by comparison.

Social networking sites do cause problems, some serious. But so does practically every human activity. Don't forget our love affair with the car kills around a million people a year worldwide. We can blame teenagers for a lot - but not for being teenagers.

Comments

  1. Hear! Hear! (Though I'd love to hear more about your basement chem lab :-) )

    ReplyDelete
  2. One day, Sue! It's on my 'things to blog about some time' list...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I spent a lot of my teenage years playing Motorhead to my collection of cacti.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope