Digital Smarts - The Conformity Fostered By Facebook

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The Facebook Effect – the tendency to spend more time with people who think like you and less with people who are different – isn’t trivial according to a recent New York Times op-ed column entitled How Facebook Warps Our Worlds. In fact, this reassuring view of the world may actually be leading us to conform rather than think out of the box about problems, issues and solutions. While everyone’s experience with social networking is different, it is good to remember that there are many sides to every issue and the views you read on Facebook or other social networking sites or even in the first page of a Google search may only be reflecting what you already know or feel about an issue. It is important to probe further online and out in the “real” world for other viewpoints, experiences and perspectives.