1) Online social networking is getting younger every day. The article reports that 89% of students at a California public school have cell phones, and some 81% of them are on MySpace. That's huge! That means that if you're not using high speed internet at home you're probably considered somewhat outcast from the normal flow of high school. The reason I point this out is the article quotes several well-spoken graduate students, mid to late twenties, about how online networking sites just don't have as much apppeal for them anymore. I suspect they are outgrowing these sites, and more importantly that these sites are re-packaging and re-marketing themselves for a younger and younger crowd. We've seen it with teenie bopper movie marketing, no surprises here.

2) The more social networking sites there are, the less powerful they become individually. This is how social networking on the Web relates back to Getting Things Done. The more social networking sites you engage with, the more Inboxes you have. Sign up for another site = create another bucket that you'll have to collect, process and organize into a trusted system before you can effectively do and review the items. I think this is one of the least-talked-about dangers of lots of online resources that are popping up today. All of these new tools and sites are designed for convenience- convenient socializing in particular. But convenience gets left in the dust as we accumulate more tools, more gadgets, more sites, more inboxes. So perhaps the deeper issue this article taps into is that we are coming back into an Age of Consolidation. I'll be swapping my Palm and LG cellphone for a Treo soon to prove my commitment to minimalism.

Ok, bones picked. What I most liked about the article was this quote from a 19 year-old Florida student with a great insight about his own generation (hey, it's not easy to come up with objective criticism of your own kind). He reflects on how young people are now using text messaging to avoid uncomfortable social situations, like cancelling a date. "Text messaging has become the easy way out... Our generation needs to get over this fear of confrontation and rejection." Now we have even more options for breaking and/or renegotiating our agreements in an instant, less-human, less-emotional way. A good thing or a bad thing? You tell me...