Social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace encourage teenagers to build “transient relationships” that can leave them traumatised and even suicidal when they collapse, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has warned.
Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols also expressed concern about the rise of individualism in society. He described footballers who break their contracts to move to other clubs for bigger salaries as “mercenaries” and said moves to loosen laws on assisted suicide were particularly worrying.
His comments in The Sunday Telegraph follow the inquest into the death of 15-year-old Megan Gillan, a student at Macclesfield High School in Cheshire who took a fatal overdose of painkillers after being bullied on social networking site Bebo.
Archbishop Nichols said the sites encouraged young people to put too much emphasis on the number of friends they have rather than on the quality of their relationships.
“Among young people often a key factor in them committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships,” he said. “They throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they’re desolate.”
He continued: “It’s an all or nothing syndrome that you have to have in an attempt to shore up an identity – a collection of friends about whom you can talk and even boast. But friendship is not a commodity, friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it’s right.”
Yahoo (Thanks Kelly)
“bullied on social networking site Bebo.” ?? Is this for real?? How do you get bullied by a computer screen?? Sheesh.
The church, as always, in fear of globalisation. Forget it pal, your cover was blown when we all started reading for ourselves.
The solution, I’m sure, is that we should all concentrate on developing long lasting friendships with invisible men who live in the sky.
Is he bestowing fear upon the public?!?
what a church-like thing to do…………
i’m with artificialhabitat. the church has always feared this kind of thing, but instead of admitting it properly they of course tell everyone that it’s evil and use their status to back it up. it’s a load of rubbish, it’s simply an older generation afraid of change.
nothing to do with them being against us spreading the truth of course
however I don’t think they have too much to worry about because most sheeple on facebook would rather send and recieve pretend jaffa cakes to each other, than wake up to contol that people like the arch bishop and his bosses are trying to create
I would assume freedom of information across the internet threatens their control somewhat.
Incidentally, I think the Catholic church is the one most likely to leave young children traumatised & suicidal, not facebook!
given the choice for a young impressionable boy what’s the safest place, facebook (in their own bedroom) or the catholic church… erm
and we only know about the abuse that the church/media couldn’t control
At times I find comment’s to these articles as, if not more intriguing as the article itself.
To answer ‘Gaz’:
It’s not the computer screen, or even the site thats bullying the kid. I know, you know that. But it’s the comments – Words have power, & strangely even more so online (usually due to lack of face to face contact) . This is especially so with a young kid, or teenagers rapidly developing sense of identity & ravenous desire to be accepted socially. Kids are sensitive to thier own reputations and how they are percieved by thier peers. Then you also have to take into account the lack of audio and visual cues that usually indicate the intensity and meaning that can be lost over e-mail,txt or short comments too.
To post a question to Artificialhabitat & Alison – Your reactions are interesting, which im curious… Would the comments in this article be more valid if expressed by, say, Secular Child psycologists?
Point out, precisely whats been said wrong with regards to social networking relationships. I’ve seen evidence of and dealt with what the archbishop has been saying first hand with friends & relatives. If you read or watch the news you will know that the archbishop is right, as demonstrated by cases where misunderstandings online have sometimes drastic and tragic results (even with adults with divorces & seperations, & status changes in facebook).
Your reactions only reveal one thing – impulsive comments rooted in bias. Which clouds judgement and has no place in the search for Truth.
Plus, the church doesnt fear globalisation, it embraced it at its very foundation. Jesus instructed his Discliples to ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’ .
Anyways, thats me tuppence worth, I’m not intending to troll or flame. But for truth to be found, impulsive Bias needs to be weeded out.
Yeah and transient relationships don’t happen AT ALL in real life, do they. Certainly not at school! Oh no. And bullying only ever happens on the web, nowhere else in the real world. We must all remember this.
I hate that just because someone happens to be head honcho in some religion and wears a stupid hat, he’s suddenly an authority on everything. He’s making massive generalistic statements about things he knows nothing about; what does waving a stick in a church once a week do to make you an expert on teen suicide?
If anyone else said this stuff they’d be challenged for making generalisatons and coming to conclusions based on nothing but their own prejudices about how it’s not like it was it their day and the kids are all soulless automatons now.
Oh dear I appear to have gotten angry.
Whilst I disagree with the man I’m not here to bash the archbishop.
I don’t agree with these people on faebook who have hundreds of so called ‘friends’, would these ‘friends’ really be there for you in a crisis? Are they true ‘friends’? The answer is no on both counts, these are either nosey people or people who want some kind of celebrity status, the feeling that they are interesting to others.
Yes, some of my facebook contacts could be considered “transient” but that’s not enough to make me suicidal. Nore is it enough to make any other young person suicidal. Human beings in general don’t just top themselves over the tiniest of things like some silly online contact. I think these people really underestimate our generation. However, I have every sympathy for that poor girl who was cyber bullied, and I suspect she was probably bullied in day-to-day life too.
But anywho, back to the topic. Due to the private nature of Facebook, it’s only fun or interesting when you have your real friends added with maybe a few acquaintances. It’s a great way of keeping in contact with friends who are going their own ways (ie the 18-23 age group of uni goers, wether they are just going to seperate unis or atucally moving home and country). Through Facebook, I have been able to talk to people who are staying in the same halls as myself this year. That COULD develop into a meaningful friendship, or not. I won’t be too cut up about it
Either way, I feel like I’m getting to know people now. Okay, I better stop ranting >,>
Gaz – it’s pretty easy actually, all it takes is your ‘mates’ repeatedly posting nasty messages about you.
Don’t be mislead by the headline – his point was more subtle, that online relationships are not as rounded as face-to-face relationships.
MajorasWrath:
“To post a question to Artificialhabitat & Alison – Your reactions are interesting, which im curious… Would the comments in this article be more valid if expressed by, say, Secular Child psycologists?”
Would a psychological assessment seem more valid if it was expressed by someone qualified in psychology…? Yes, yes it would.
@Brett:
http://cambriana.posterous.com/xkcd-sheeple
Just saying
eek. What would we do without facebook!?
[...] phillis wrote an interesting post today onArchbishop slams online friendships « Derren Brown BlogHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
Some of the points he highlights from a societal perspective are valid. Online relationships can appear transient to the un-learned, but a counter point would be, how many family and friend relationships have been enhanced and enriched by the online communications revolution that is upon us. Relationships implode in the physical world too you know.
On footballers, yes they are ‘money mercenaries’. Move along, nothing to see here. He’ll be saying they fight and have flash cars next!
On assisted suicide, the debate is not worrying, but welcomed. The sooner that this issue is brought into the open, the better. Why is it that if a British citizen, decides they want to end it all, with some dignity, they have to travel to Switzerland.
If the church was anyway near intelligent, logical or passionate about their belief system, they would be using technology to facilitate open and transparent communication channels with their followers. Imagine how many followers the Roman Catholic church would have if they were on Twitter, it just beggars belief. But then again maybe, Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed et al are the new belief systems, and this is what the church is really worried about. Technology and Religion, never changes does it!
They could even bring out a new Twitter bumper sticker that reads, ‘I follow (insert religious entity here)’… Well I thought it was funny
People without experience in the real world (like Nichols) should not comment on those things like that. It makes them look even more dumb than before ….
Because no one ever committed suicide due to social bullying prior to the invention of the internet, correct? Yes, we have one example of an individual who appears to have committed suicide because of something that real people did using the internet as a medium. This is hardly proof that the internet is evil.
How many cases of enriching internet friendships is he ignoring? How many families brought closer by being able to keep in touch so easily? How many supportive networks? How many suicides have been prevented thanks to supportive internet-based groups (such as PostSecret, for example)?
How many people have killed themselves after the trauma priests have inflicted?
MajorasWrathm you said: “Point out, precisely whats been said wrong with regards to social networking relationships. I’ve seen evidence of and dealt with what the archbishop has been saying first hand with friends & relatives. If you read or watch the news you will know that the archbishop is right, as demonstrated by cases where misunderstandings online have sometimes drastic and tragic results (even with adults with divorces & seperations, & status changes in facebook).”
Are any of these things new? Did any of these things not happen prior to the invention of the internet? Have people not gotten divorced over silly misunderstandings, misplaced words, a ring temporarily removed, etc.?
Is he right that many relationships on social networking sites are transient and that many are even unhealthy? Of course he is! But the point being made is that many relationships are that way whether the internet is involved or not.
The only major change that I have experienced thanks to the internet is that I was able to meet my husband, a man who lived half a world away. Had we been born into our parents’ generation, we would have never known the other existed. As it is, we were not only able to meet, but also to conduct our relationship until it had progressed to a point where the investment of moving half a world away became viable.
The internet is just a tool. Don’t forget that it’s people who make use of it and give it either a healthy or unhealthy meaning.
hey folks. yer missing the big change here–the geniuses who decided to include scoreboards on social networking sites, telling everyone how many “friends” or “followers” we have. this is why he calls it a commodity. and what is the point of that? are we all individual truman shows now, which need ratings? these numbers have no relationship to our value as human beings. ted bundy would undoubtedly have thousands of “friends” on his sites…& he was one of the most dangerous human beings who ever lived.
perhaps ironically, i got the link to this article on facebook.
Maybe we should go back to burning people who dont believe in God, or they are just upset that most of their priests are involved with online kiddy porn!!!!!!
Yet again, religion blames the modern world for its moral pitfalls. What a perfect world we must have lived in before the Internet – no bullying/suicides/paedophillia, etc. Having lived with mental health issues for most of my life, I find it is unlikely that a particular event causes someone to take their life. There are many, many factors that contribute which to an individual becoming depressed and eventually taking their own life (genetic predisposition, childhood experiences, social/cultural experiences, relationships, self esteem and confidence issues, poverty, pre-existing mental disorder, etc. It was likely the online bullying would have been one of many.
I would indeed have respect the Archbishop or anyone making such statements, providing they can support their claims and point us in the direction of such research or evidence. I hardly think there are long term studies yet of networking sites. Surely we are only just receiving the results of long term studies of the Pill. This is just another generalised, unsupported, sweeping statement showing fear and ignorance of the modern world in order to find answers. If you’re looking for a bias, look to religion.
The catholic church concerned about the rise of individualism in society? Suprise surprise…
I understand what the archbishop is trying to do however he methods have alot to be desired. Yes he is right that children need social developement and interaction with other children. However blaming the social networks is pointing the finger and doesn’t solve any problems. Would it not be more productive to ensure that children with problems have the support they need when they are struggling. The archbishop is too eager to attack something which he truely doesn’t understand, instead the church could work in conjunction with facebook and other social networking sites to help individuals who are suffering with problems?
Being a parent I am more than happy to allow my child access to these social network (which I am a member of) as he gets older. However this has to be balanced with social activities and clubs, depending on what he wants to do. Even if they play on games consoles it doesn’t take much to invite a few friends around and break up the day with activities.
You could compare this to a reckless driver who uses a ford car to plow down many people. Who would you hold responsible? The car manufacturer or the individual driving the car? Would it not be more beneficial to inpose stricter tests that may reduce the chance of this happening again.
It’s always the social networker, not the social networking. I am sorry for anybody who has taken their own life as it’s The Gift but there are deeper psychological issues at work than things like FB, twitter, or myspace. Namely, the desire to be loved, accepted, or just plain desired on some level by others. This can lead to intense emotional attachment (ie – FB, friends, etc), which can lead to obsessions, which can lead to suicidal tendencies in some people.
It’s a tough and painful process but when you take responsbility for your life it improves tremendously. My battle with despression was no longer a battle once I realized that I was causing the fight.
book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman helped me out quite a bit when i got a little too hung up in the online world:
Amazon
I think he is making a valid point. I know a young girl who got bullied on her bebo site; she recieved constant messages of abuse, including death threats, which obviously hurt her. Some people these days think they have many friends just because they have a few hundred/thousand ‘friends’ on these sites, but really how many of those ‘friends’ will be there when needed. On this occasion, I think the Archbishop is talking a lot of sense, and I completely agree with him.