Jesuit Father warns about the risks of Social Networking Sites

I promise this is my last attack on social networking sites. That is unless Pope Benedict XVI himself lays down the smackdown on these websites.

I was reading this article on CNA and it immediately caught my eye. According to the article off of CNA, a Gregorian University Professor, Father Antonio Spadaro, was warning about the uses of social networking sites. Here is an excerpt from the article.

"Father Spadaro says that on Facebook, “the need to know others and to make oneself known, and the need to experience friendships are ‘serious’ needs that run the risk of confusing superficial and sporadic relationships with friendship; or communication with exhibitionism; or the fact of wanting to know others with voyeurism. While the difference between the one and the other is radical, an appropriate education in relationships and one’s self-perception is needed in order to see it. (CNA)"

Wow. Isn't that what most critics have been saying about social networking sites all along?

However the Father later writes, “The ideal use for Facebook, in my opinion,” the priest wrote, “is one based on real relationships. It is an important medium for rediscovering classmates, childhood friends, those we have lost contact with, for rediscovering old friends.” "Properly used, he continued, Facebook can become an opportunity to “strengthen relationships which because of distance or other motives are at risk of fading” or it can be used to “recover relationships that have grown distant through life. (CNA)"

This is my last post on it I promise. X D .

"Italian expert warns of risks of social networking sites" Catholic News Agency. 19 January 2009. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14815