Facebook vs. America's sense of community

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' in GoLocal24.com

Harvard College has withdrawn the acceptances of at least 10 young people because of their nasty postings on Facebook. As in so many ways, the Internet has made life worse, not better. Some civil libertarians, such as writer and Harvard Law  Emeritus Prof. Alan Dershowitz, have criticized Harvard’s actions on the grounds of free speech. But Harvard is a private institution that has every right to let in whomever it wants into its community. In this case, it doesn’t want a bunch of young people who are crude and cruel or at least act as if they are.

These kids, smart and generally affluent, if lacking judgment, can apply elsewhere – assuming they can remove most traces of their comments, though that may be difficult, or get colleges to chalk it all up to youthful exuberance.  Stuff on the Internet is as enduring as a manmade monster can be. Everything about us that anyone has ever entered on the Internet is there in some crevasse.

If only more people of all ages would spend much less time on social media and more time, well, outdoors, for example, or reading a book onpaper and thus while doing so not being constantly distracted by the gyrations of the Internet and especially of social media, which are engineered to be addictive. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the famous Harvard billionaire dropout, has done far more harm than good for civil society and democracy by creating echo chambers where people see and hear things mostly according to their long-held biases and their insular interests. Facebook is helping to destroy a broader sense of American community and  the duties of civic engagement..

But the genie is out of the bottle!