Ofcom (Office of Communications - the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) released a research document entitled Social Networking - A quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use. The full report can be found at: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/socialnetworking/

Which one of the categories do you think Robin Blake, Head of Media Literacy falls into? ... Alpha Socializer? Attention Seeker? Follower? Faithful? Functional? ... or Concerned about safety? Technically inexperienced? Intellectual rejecter? ... Interesting categories ... Refer Rule #3, My Terms.

As reported by BBC News (Darren Waters, Technology Editor BBC News website) in an article entitled Children Flock to Social Networks, "According to the Ofcom report, almost 60% of children use social networking sites to make new friends, compared to 17% of adults who use the sites for the same purpose."

There are bigger issues here than the cardinal sin of me not friending my children on Facebook. The report rightly calls out pitfalls that need to be contemplated and negotiated ...

• Unintended consequences of publicly posting personal sensitive information
• confusion over privacy settings
• contact with people you don't know

IMHO, tip of the iceberg. The new technologies are clearly transformational. Media education and literacy are important. Education will take time. The gap here is a large one ...

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