Dr Rob Clowes is writing a book with the working title ‘Being Human in the Age of Facebook’. He presented some of his work in progress to the Brighton Salon on Tuesday 21 July. His background in the IT industry and the philosophy of science gave him several ways to investigate what has become a huge phenomenon.

Rob Clowes: A couple of years ago we organised a salon with Helen Birtwistle of the Institute of Ideas on the meaning of friendship, and the then quite new social networking sites such as Facebook. A US survey in 2004 had found that up to 25% of people claimed that they had no real intimates. Yet by 2007 there was networking technology where people would ask: ‘Can I be your friend?’ What is it all about? Why is it so important?

In February this year Facebook turned five years old and then had 150 million users worldwide [there are some 200 million now]. Its founder, Mark Zuckerman, celebrated it as a safe and trusted environment. It has grown from what was originally a kind of electronic yearbook for Harvard students. But the success of Facebook and other sites has drawn concerns and criticism from many quarters. Baroness Susan Greenfield, a high-profile spokesperson for the scientific community from her position as a leading neuroscientist, addressed a House of Lords committee on the subject and raised important questions and concerns.

Why are people using these sites? What are the dangers to children’s brains? She drew out five areas of risk for their lordships to consider: Human brains are very plastic and children’s brains particularly so – these sites may pose a threat to their development; the persistent use of this technology may change who we all are fundamentally; children may lose the ability to read other people’s emotions and the capacity to make real friends; screen culture may be related to the rates of autism and ADHD; and that screen culture may also make all of us shallower.

The Guardian ‘Bad Science’ columnist and author Ben Goldacre has raised some good points in opposition to the Baroness’s issues. There is very little evidence that any of the concerns she raised have anything to do with this technology.

These days we know that children do not have the chances to go out and make friends in the ways they once did. Children use different methods of achieving different things and this technology is a part of it. Watching TV for long periods has been displaced among children by use of other screen-based activities. Will we all be lonely and disembodied? Social networking is part of people’s attempt to build what is called social capital. It is part of the strategies people have to maintain relationships with others and could be said to produce more social contact, not less. If you have friends already and want to keep in better touch with them, then Facebook et al are a good idea. If you are already lonely then spending your time on Facebook is not such a good idea.

Are our brains being restructured? Probably they are, but is this a relevant question? Before the invention of writing, bards and poets of the oral tradition had to learn huge poems the size of the Iliad – no-one does this any more, so you could say that we have lost the ability to use those kinds of memory techniques. If you learned the guitar intensively at music lessons every day you would probably say that your brain had changed. People’s brains are plastic and they do change. Technologies physically extend the mind. I google things when I’m working: it’s sometimes easier than using my own memory. Perhaps one day we may very well come to value organic thinkers, people who get away from the screen and Google for a while, and rely on their memories.

Children think they are good at managing lots of Windows, dividing their attention among different tasks, but early work suggests they are not as good as they think they are and they are not as good as adults. In schools and universities there is a focus on teaching skills rather than knowledge for its own sake. But it is important to remember that technologies, although they don’t seem very plastic, have changed an awful lot as they are developed in use. Facebook’s original role as a college library of people has been completely repurposed by the way it is actually used by many people and the technology used in it has also been developed toward different ends than were originally envisaged by its creators.

The kinds of questions that Baroness Greenfield asked would probably have been asked anyway, regardless of the kinds of technology people use because we live a very plastic culture. The technology has heightened our perceptions about things that are going on in our culture and highlighted the concerns that we have about it, such as privacy, risk, celebrity and the intergenerational relationships between adults and children. Social networking technology is reflective of these concerns; it doesn’t generate them.

The discussion

Among the questions raised: ‘Why do we rush to pre-judge and establish risks with these things?’ ‘What is wrong with letting it all hang out on Facebook?’ ‘Should we be more concerned about the dumbing down that surfaced as a concern of Cultural Studies 15 years ago?’ ‘I read more books now and watch less TV’, said one man, ‘but my concern about Facebook is that it is a private. Who really owns all this stuff, the data that everybody puts up on these sites?’

A museum specialist in the audience pointed to very successful uses of social networking sites that have produced very useful archives of all the pictures that museums have across the country. Twitter has largely helped people find out more about the world rather than dumb them down. Another speaker’s main concern was that our society already suffered from a blurring of what is public and what is private and the way social networking sites were used by many people breaks down the distinctions between them further.

An academic in the fields of mind and technology pointed out that it has often been established interests that generate opposition to new technologies. The church’s attempt to ban anyone printing anything except approved texts in the 16th century, and the aristocracy’s opposition to building railways, led by the Duke of Wellington, were historical cases in point. Another man said Facebook had fundamental differences from other technologies. It could be said to broaden friendships rather than deepen them. ‘We’re a more and more mobile species,’ agreed Rob. ‘Our loved ones live further away and we are separated from our friends by greater distances than in the past. You could call Facebook a counter-alienation technology. We need weak ties with many people because they make us feel good and without them we tend to have problems.’

Robert Putnam’s influential Bowling Alone looked at the collapse of associations between people in America. When once people had all sorts of social ties, such as bowling leagues and other associations, these institutions had fallen away and the opportunity to build friendships and strengthen ties had been eroded. Facebook is a way of keeping track of weak ties to others.

‘Privacy is the most difficult issue,’ said Rob. ‘You cannot delete your profile from Facebook, partly because it is not just you that contributes the material to it; your friends do too.’ Having considered the ethical risks of Facebook at a recent discussion organised by the British Computer Society, Rob thinks it’s questionable whether we should invite the state as Big Brother to control the personal data that is in private hands, however. The question of privacy itself has changed; but it should surely mean the state does not intervene.

As the chair of the meeting I asked the room if they would describe Facebook and other new technologies as public or private spaces, as they do seem to blur the differences between them. (It wasn’t fair; from what people had been talking about Facebook is obviously capable of assisting both the publicising of the privacy of the self and the creation of a public persona that is nothing like the self, simultaneously.)

Someone else said the blurring of the public and private is problematic - as shown by us wanting kids to have their own space at the same time as us wanting to know what they are doing in it! And another said that private and public were changing, as could be seen by the CCTV everywhere. Facebook is a private company that can change its rules at any time, a man pointed out. Another woman, an artist, said she had many friends to keep in touch with as part of her work internationally and that she had developed a sort of vetting system to sort out who she should cultivate relationships with.

Another speaker said that these technologies were both symptoms and causes of the problems of maintaining weak ties. They became a narcissist expression of lifestyle and turned us all into teenagers when we use them. Another said that skilled use of the Facebook settings could grade the stuff we want to show and to whom we might show it. Letting it all hang out might cause problems but we should develop independence and not worry too much about the world’s opinions.

Privacy still exists, one woman pointed out. We no longer live in villages where everybody knows everybody’s business. There are positives and negatives to new technology, said someone else, that could be exploited by reactionary Daily Mail readers. New technology may encourage us to read and write but it could also be the wrong kind of reading and writing. We’re all nosey, said another woman. ‘I find I don’t chat to anyone any more about some things because it’s easier to just look at the updates on Facebook,’ she said.

Brighton Salon co-director Dan Travis said there were no heroes on Facebook, but although this raised a few smiles as Dan has 50-odd ‘fans of Dan’ on Facebook!. The sites had given us the opportunity to act like little celebrities with our own little public spaces.

Rob rounded the discussion off by pointing out that Friendster, launched in 2002, was probably the first mass use site of this type and managed to alienate its users by deleting many of their profiles for not conforming to its terms of use. When they did not have the freedom they wanted, users jumped ship. Self-regulation of new technology is good because of the different ways it can be repurposed by users in ways not envisaged by it creators. If the rules are written in stone for applications they can become less valuable.

City air makes you free – the retreat from everybody knowing everybody’s business allowed space for people to become different people and express themselves. The question of the private and public spheres is the hardest, and because of that it is too early to call in the state. Intervention would stop data being sold but might close much else down. ‘If it’s a choice between [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg or Gordon Brown having my data, I’d pick Zuckerberg,’ said Rob.