noteworthy wrote:
] Thanks to e-mail, online chat rooms and instant messages,
] adolescents have at last succeeded in shielding their social
] lives from adult scrutiny. But this comes at a cost:
] teenagers nowadays are both more connected to the world
] at large than ever, and more cut off from the social
] encounters that have historically prepared young people for
] the move into adulthood.

Hrm... Sounds to me like the same luddite call that has been raised for 2 decades over online communications. I grew up with this stuff, and the fact is that personal connections online spilled into the real world, and produced real friendships that will last a lifetime.

The idea that TV is preferable to the internet is completely idiotic. People don't use the internet to shop. They use it to send email. Its like saying that the telephone is an anti-social technology because people don't make phone calls in groups.

I think there is a wide open space for research into user interfaces and applications that make it easier for people to use computers in groups. However, to hold up the typical 1980's "family time," when groups of people stared silently at a screen for hours while it spoon fed them information, as an example of a healthy social (and intellectual) life, well thats just ridiculous.

I don't even get what the author's analogy has to do with the situation. Its fairly impossible as an adolescent to get into your girlfriend's pants without actually meeting her father first. His disdain for long phone conversations seems irrelevant. If you want to do more then talk to her, you're going to have to go over there. Maybe he just didn't like his daughter tying up the phone.