Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Facebook Was Not Criticized By Archbishop Vincent Nichols

I'm seeing attack after attack on Archbishop Vincent Nichols for his comments about FaceBook and other network community sites. It was amusing at first (seeing everyone criticizing without quoting) but now it's just boring. The first report of his comments that I could find were here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8180115.stm

I didn't really see him directly criticize social network sites. I did see him say, "Facebook and MySpace might contribute towards communities, but I'm wary about it." That's about as close to an attack as the BBC could report—that he is wary of such sites.

His wariness is well founded. For years, social experts have been saying that these transient relationships are bad for society. This is nothing new. Teenage addiction to such pastimes as texting, IMing, and other forms of electronic communication were pointed out long ago, and very few experts have disagreed with the fact that the new social networking fad (it's well beyond the 'fad' stage now) had an isolating effect on people. Studies have even pointed out that networking activities are anti-social by nature.

But no one will talk about that. Instead, they'll point to this one bishop, who is justified in his opinions, and say that the Church is, once again, behind the times. I wonder how we've survived these 2000 years, being so slow to "get with it."