TED Talk on Social Networking

Ah, TED, I regularly find amazing things on this site.  Stefana Broadbent talks in one of those videos.  Her research flies in the face of the the theory that the Internet is driving us all further apart.  She says we are using these technologies to connect in very different ways.

Parents are parenting via Skype.

Families eat together from across the world via webcams.

People at work are IMing, texting, and more with friends and family.  This allows connections to thrive despite the isolation of work.

This is being done on a massive level.  Pew studies show that 50% of people with work email are doing personal communication, 75% of us are making personal calls with cell phones at work.  100% of people with texting use it for personal communication at work.

This matches closely a conversation that happened on Publib recently where a librarian asked about techniques to stop this sort of communication at their library.  Is that the solution?  To stop it?

I would argue that the solution is to embrace it.  Staff members who feel connected are better workers.  Yes, a small percentage of staff may abuse it, but that’s true to anything and can be handled on a person by person basis.  Creating strangling policies to eliminate use of Facebook, IM, and cell phones at work will not get libraries the results they are looking for.  By which I mean, it will not get more invested staff members and will not create better customer service.  I expect it will do the opposite.