**** is a bit worried about the shark gnawing on her legs but has sweet as reception in the middle of the pacific ocean. Score!!!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 by le cu
(Click to enlarge, but obviously my mobile phone's camera has zooming/focus issues, so if you can't make that out: Two girls lost in a stormwater drain in Adelaide updated their Facebook status via their mobile phone rather than ringing emergency services. A Fire Service spokesman said the 13-year-old girls were lucky another young friend was online and was able to call for help for them. Walking through drains is known as “urban caving”, is popular in many major cities, despite the danger of flash floods. - NZ Herald, Sideswipe, 09.09.09)
Perhaps I’m being ageist, but I’m in minor panic state when it comes to teens (and I hadn’t even thought about the under-10s till now), the internet, and, let’s be frank, stupidity. Wait, let me clarify; teenage stupidity as consequence of the internet.
The way cellular technology is set up for this, all you need other than the actual phone is enough battery to make an emergency call. You do not need credit, and in most cases, you do not even need a sim card. Turn it on, press SOS/Emergency (which, provided you have set it up as the emergency number of your country of residence - most seem to be automatically set up upon the entering the country to be sold – at least, I’ve always found it so) and you will get that all too familiar ‘###, what is your emergency?’ It’s a fairly international thing.
Were these girls so socially inept as a result of constantly communicating via SNS that they lacked the common sense to talk to an operator? Did they forget that the mobile phone’s fundamental function is to make and receive calls? In the world of a teenager, are mobile phones only for SMS, cameras, music and the internet, and do Facebook Status Updates have more immediacy than an emergency call?
In a state of emergency, regardless of the degree of how life threatening it is, the first thing that obviously occurred to the girls was not to call the one place most people around the world are taught to call as a basic survival skill, but to tell their Facebook friends just what they were up to at that precise moment in their lives. The update itself wasn’t publicly released. Perhaps they asked someone to call for help. Perhaps it was somewhat humorous: aaaahhhh da water is everywhere & my hi-topz r so not wotaproof. Not kewl!!!! I mean, I can appreciate humour at the worst of times because it beats panicking… except I know I have never had any of the emergency services team rushing to my aide every time I threaten to jump off a cliff because the university wireless connection is absolutely useless and driving me up the wall, because my friends don’t take the supposedly dead serious things (not that I ever am, but you know, in context) very seriously on Facebook. They know I have enough common sense to call 111 than type out “…is trapped in a burning car with awesome reception… so this is what burning human flesh smells like, mmm…” and then cross my fingers that at least one friend (preferably the ones in NZ) is online and constantly pressing F5 for an update.
The addictive and convenient nature of the internet is hindering the common sense of young children. They are becoming so dependent of this technology that is always there for them almost anywhere they go (thanks to mobile internet, say the two girls I’m sure) and this in turn is redefining not just communication, but priorities and logic in our youth. They say children are the future, as if these guys will save the human race from dated and inconvenient ways of living. But if the future would rather text message Facebook than call an emergency operator for rescue, I’m kind of thinking that even telegrams shouldn’t be dismissed just yet.