1. Social networking under fresh attack as cyber-scepticism sweeps US
Level 3 Advanced
1 Warmer
Answer the questions below.
1. What do Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging help or allow you to do?
2. Do you use any of them in your personal and/or business life? Why? Why not?
2 Key words
Fill the gaps in the sentences using these key words from the text.
quip emphatic merits backlash shunning
cyber-scepticism spontaneously frantically
etiquette diminish pathological enshrine
1. doubts that people have about computers and technology ______________________________
2. When you do something in a very urgent way, you do it ______________________________.
3. ______________________________ behaviour or feelings are not based on reason and cannot be controlled
by the person experiencing them.
4. ______________________________ are advantages or positive qualities that someone or something has.
5. to say something funny or clever ______________________________
6. ______________________________ is a strong, negative and often angry reaction to something that has
happened, especially a political or social change.
7. said or shown in a very strong and clear way ______________________________
8. to officially record something such as an idea or principle in a document so that it cannot be ignored
______________________________
9. When you are ______________________________ something, you are deliberately avoiding it.
10. make someone or something less important or smaller than they really are
______________________________
11. a set of rules for behaving correctly in social situations ______________________________
12. When you do something ______________________________, you do it without having planned it beforehand.
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2. Social networking under fresh attack as cyber-scepticism sweeps US
Level 3 Advanced
Social networking under fresh attack popular culture. A recent bestseller in the US,
as cyber-scepticism sweeps US The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, suggests that
use of the internet is altering the way we think
Twitter and Facebook don’t connect people
to make us less capable of digesting large and
– they isolate them from reality, say a rising
complex amounts of information, such as books
number of academics
and magazine articles. The book was based
Paul Harris in New York on an essay that Carr wrote in The Atlantic
22 January, 2011 magazine. It was just as emphatic and was
headlined: Is Google Making Us Stupid?
1 The way in which people frantically communicate
online via Twitter, Facebook and instant 7 Another strand of thought in the field of cyber-
messaging can be seen as a form of modern scepticism is found in The Net Delusion, by
madness, according to a leading Evgeny Morozov. He argues that social media
American sociologist. has bred a generation of “slacktivists”. It has
made people lazy and enshrined the illusion that
2 “A behaviour that has become typical may still
clicking a mouse is a form of activism equal to
express the problems that once caused us to
real world donations of money and time.
see it as pathological,” writes Massachusetts
Institute of Technology professor Sherry Turkle in 8 The backlash has crossed the Atlantic. In
her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an Cyburbia, published in the UK in 2010, James
attack on the information age. Harkin surveyed the modern technological world
and found some dangerous possibilities. While
3 Turkle’s book, soon to be published in the UK, Harkin is no pure cyber-sceptic, he found many
has caused a sensation in America, which is reasons to be worried as well as pleased about
usually more obsessed with the merits of social the new technological era. Elsewhere, hit film
networking. She recently appeared on Stephen The Social Network has been seen as a
Colbert’s late-night comedy show, The Colbert thinly-veiled attack on the social media
Report, to talk about her new book and her generation, suggesting that Facebook was
thesis. When Turkle said she had been at funerals created by people who failed to fit in with the
where people checked their iPhones, Colbert real world.
quipped: “We all say goodbye in our own way.”
9 Turkle’s book, however, has sparked the most
4 Turkle’s thesis is simple: technology is debate so far. It is a cry from the heart for putting
threatening to dominate our lives and make us down the BlackBerry, ignoring Facebook and
less human. Under the illusion of allowing us shunning Twitter. “We have invented inspiring
to communicate better, it is actually isolating us and enhancing technologies, yet we have
from real human interactions in a cyber-reality allowed them to diminish us,” she writes.
that is a poor imitation of the real world.
10 Fellow critics point to numerous incidents to back
5 But Turkle’s book is far from the only work of up their argument. Recently, media coverage
its kind. An intellectual backlash in America of the death in Brighton, UK, of Simone Back
is calling for a rejection of some of the values focused on a suicide note she had posted on
and methods of modern communications. Facebook that was seen by many of her 1,048
“It is a huge backlash. The different kinds of ‘friends’ on the site. Yet none called for help –
communication that people are using have instead they traded insults with each other on her
become something that scares people,” said Facebook wall.
Professor William Kist, an education expert at
11 But even the backlash now has a backlash, with
Kent State University, Ohio.
many leaping to the defence of social media.
6 The list of attacks on social media is a long one They point out that emails, Twitter and Facebook
and comes from all corners of academia and have led to more communication, not less –
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3. Social networking under fresh attack as cyber-scepticism sweeps US
Level 3 Advanced
especially for people who may have trouble Simone Back’s death appear so shocking. “Let’s
meeting in the real world because of great face it, I see no sign of anyone unplugging,”
distance or social difference. said Kist. “But, perhaps, we need to involve a
12 Defenders say theirs is just a different form of ‘netiquette’ to deal with it all.”
communication that people might have trouble 14 He also pointed out that the “real world” that
getting used to. “When you go into a coffee many social media critics long to return to never
shop and everyone is silent on their laptop, I really existed. Before people travelled on buses
understand what [Turkle] is saying about not or trains with their heads buried in their iPads
talking to one another,” Kist said. “But it is still or smartphones, they usually just travelled in
communicating. I disagree with her. I don’t see it silence. “We did not see people spontaneously
as so black and white.” talking to strangers. They were just keeping to
13 Some experts believe the debate is so fierce themselves,” Kist said.
because social networking is a new field that has
yet to develop rules and etiquette that everyone © Guardian News & Media 2011
can respect and that is why incidents such as First published in The Guardian, 22/01/11
3 Comprehension check
Find the answers to these questions in the article.
1. Why did professor Sherry Turkle appear on US TV?
2. What is Turkle’s thesis?
3. What does another professor from Ohio say about the same subject?
4. Why might ‘Google be making us stupid’?
5. Is academic criticism of modern technology only coming from the US?
6. What is the criticism of the criticism that we can read about in the article?
7. What does Kist suggest should be put in place?
4 Expressions
Match the verbs on the left with the nouns or noun phrases on the right to make expressions from the article.
1. lead a. a large amount of information
2. digest b. to the defence (of)
3. spark c. insults
4. trade d. an attack (on)
5. leap e. a debate
Then, find the expressions in the article and work with a partner to explain them in your own words.
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4. Social networking under fresh attack as cyber-scepticism sweeps US
Level 3 Advanced
5 Blended words
It’s not always possible to find the right words to talk about and describe modern technology. Therefore,
words are invented by joining together two known words to make a new blended word. For example, the
title of James Harkin’s book is Cyburbia (see paragraph 8). The word is a blend of the words cyber and
suburbia. In linguistic terms, blended words are referred to as ‘portmanteau words’.
1. Find two further blended words in the article. Which words are joined to make them? What do
they mean?
2. Do you know any more blended technology words?
6 Supporting a statement
Think of reasons to help you to support these statements. Write your answers in the open spaces below,
arguing both for and against what is stated in the left-hand column.
statement for against
Facebook, Twitter and other social
networking sites isolate people.
Sending chat and text messages
via computers / mobile phones or
posting photos / videos on websites
is not ‘real communication’.
People who use social networking
sites everyday have problems
talking to people face-to-face.
Modern technology is making us
stupid and lazy.
7 Discussion
Using your for and against notes to support your opinions, discuss the statements in Exercise 6.
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5. Social networking under fresh attack as cyber-scepticism sweeps US
Level 3 Advanced
KEY
2 Key words 4 Expressions
1. cyber-scepticism 1. d
2. frantically 2. a
3. pathological 3. e
4. merits 4. c
5. quip 5. b
6. backlash
7. emphatic
8. enshrine 5 Blended words
9. shunning
10. diminish 1. slacktivist: from slack(er) and activist = someone
11. etiquette who carries out a lazy or easy form of activism
12. spontaneously netiquette: from (inter)net and etiquette = a
code of manners or unwritten rules used in
internet communication
3 Comprehension check 2. suggestions: blog, crackberry, podcast, emoticon
1. to talk about / promote her new book, Alone
Together, and her thesis
2. that technology is threatening to dominate our lives
and make us less human
3. that the different kinds of communication that
people are using have become something that
scares people
4. because use of the internet is altering the way we
think to make us less capable of digesting large
and complex amounts of information, such as
books and magazine articles
5. no, it is also coming from the UK
6. communication methods such as emails, Twitter
and Facebook have led to more communication
and not less - especially for people who may have
trouble meeting in the real world
7. a ‘netiquette’ to maintain order in this new world of
communication
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