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Breaking with its well-established tradition of remaining respectfully quiet on subjects that reach beyond the Bible, the good old Catholic Church has this week weighed in with its opinions on social networking. Surprisingly, the Church isn’t a fan and probably won’t be delivering bite-sized sermons on Twitter any time soon.
Online \'friend\' networks guilty of dehumanising social skills sets? Image: Rene Ehrhardt/Flickr.
More pointedly, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has said social networking destinations such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo place a focus on forging potentially delicate “transient relationships” that can cause suicidal tendencies when and if they fracture.
The Church also said social networks place far too much emphasis and importance on how many friends a user can amass as opposed to the actual quality of any resulting friendships.
The criticism of social networking, which was offered up by Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols in UK broadsheet The Sunday Telegraph, comes following the suicide of 15-year-old high school student Megan Gillan, who took a fatal overdose of painkillers after being bullied online through Bebo.
“Among young people often a key factor in them committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships,” said Archbishop Nichols. “They throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they’re desolate.”
“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,” the Archbishop continued. “But friendship is not a commodity, friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it’s right.”
According to the Archbishop, modern communication methods such as mobile phone text messaging and Internet e-mail are guilty of damaging social skills and dehumanising community-based interaction whereby people physically meet and are able to form friendships that involve accurately gauging moods, reading body language, and knowing when best to interject during a proper conversation.
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