by Wendy Wrangham

An old cliché extols the physical and mental superiority of those born in the decades before the 1980s. In those heady days we didn’t care what we ate because we weren’t sitting in front of computers gaining weight; we met friends outside and played within the bounds of safety till dark. Today, overweight, allergic kids (and many adults) attract hundreds of online ‘friends’ using inappropriate images of themselves.

Social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and even the slightly more intellectual LinkedIn have millions of users comparing friend and hit numbers instead of working or meeting real friends. These virtual playgrounds do serve a purpose (music, parties, keeping up with far-flung friends), but many have found it difficult to log off and stop worrying why [insertusernamehere] hasn’t replied or how the ex is.

This online lifestyle has recently been blamed for a spate of suicides around Bridgend in the UK, where 17 youths between 15 and 27 have died over the last 13 months. An early fear was that these kids, some of whom knew each other but who are also linked on Bebo, hanged themselves in an apparent quest for cyber-immortality. Liam Clarke, who was found dead on 27 Dec 2007, still receives memorials, such as; ‘Heya Huni :) Hope Your Feeling Ok....They Looking After Yoo Up There??’.

Even kids with such a base grasp of life and language have commented on the apparent suicide trend, although authorities insist there's no internet suicide club. There is, however, a problem. Is it that they couldn't find a physical community where they wanted to live? Or is it that they were so immersed in a virtual world that death seemed a fantasy too?

Social networking sites are greenhouses for self-obsessive, extreme behavior where repercussions of online actions are as absent as human contact. These sites are the most vacuous popularity contests and most of us participate minute by minute, comment by comment, click by click. Enough. To bastardize the name of a cult British 70’s kids’ show, why don’t you just [shut down your computer] and go and do something less boring instead?

http://forums.techguy.org/random-discussion/543131-born-40s-50s-60s-70s.html

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/549322/

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