Tuesday, May 19, 2009

To be a Social Networking Butterfly or not.....


It's been a while between postings I know. I've noticed that I often think about what I would like to blog and even mentally draft blogs in my head.
So here goes the real thing....
I've been investigating the world of social networking. As an older and more responsible muppet to 2 younger mupp-ettes (if you will) it's an area that does hold some degree of dread for me. I can hear my children now "You're so old" with "uncool" implied but not actually said.
After looking at a few networking sites I came across an example of a young man with autism who wasn't able to verbally communicate with people but who had lots of social network friends and was able to deal with people very effectively this way (without all the distracting and ambiguous facial expressions that we all use and which people with autism find very challenging to interpret). This example actually made me feel good and see a real value for social networking sites.
Another example I came across was where a library had set up a networking site specifically to gather information and advice about what gaming platforms and associated games (think along the lines of PlayStation and Xbox) would be best for the library. This one particularly hit home with me as a member asked questions about the Xbox 360 nunchuks and remotes. I'd recently had exactly the same questions and was very confused by the whole nunchuk issue. (I'm sure you'll have guessed that my children were more than happy to answer these questions that I had, and now I'm not an expert by any means but I'm not a novice either.)
As to whether I would feel comfortable with the mupp-ettes joining a social networking site - I'm still thinking about that one!