slippery concepts and time displaced interactions

Digital Wellbeing is a slippery concept, but a very useful one. I think. From the physical impact of increasing levels of sedentary and screen-moderated work to the psychological impact of the unbounded online task space we are in a zone now where digital wellbeing is a core self-care skill at every age. 

Digital needs vary throughout lifespan, also. Right now, the pioneers of the ubiquitous online digital space and presence are starting to move into a life stage where they need to define the needs of older people online. This will need a move from a digital deficit model to one of digital enablement, sensory support and less of the constant upchurn of new irrelevant system learning. 

At the other end of the agespan, children online need to move from a behavioural approach defined by fear of online risk to one which embraces online possibilities and asserts digital rights. Children (and teenagers, especially) need space to experiment, learn, construct identity and make mistakes. You don't get to that in a tediously constant risk environment.

For many adults the endlessly spawning nature of online digital administration has created online work, education and home administration spaces of dystopian intensity where tasks proliferate, endlessly and boundlessly. Not least among these task-spawning areas is wellbeing, where bots, apps, tasks, calendars, to-dos, alerts and more all cluster around the increasing task space of maintaining happiness and optimism in a complex modern world.

My digital wellbeing task list includes three social actions for each hundred comments read

I scan the comments section. People are talking about: peace of mind and safety; navigating wellbeing; reducing their use of digital activities to increase their wellbeing; information and relatable sources.

Five useful tips for getting the most out of your course

Interested to see the five useful tips essentially reduce to: self identify, interact, follow, bookmark, record and resist the urge to lurk. The same basic rules of interacting on forums. 

The potential unfamiliar term here, lurking, is a concept that has been around since well before the online social space. Group-created magazines and resources such as APAs (amateur press associations) and Zines (amateur produced magazines) used the term RAEBNC (pronounced ray-b-nik or rayb-nich in conversation) to stand for "Read and Enjoyed but no Comment" for exactly that moment in time when you have completed viewing the information item but have nothing to add. 

In physical space training (I train in both environments) there is a body language equivalent of RAEBNC - eye contact, a nod, a look, it varies student by student. The urge (expressed by some of my fellow trainers and most of my fellow managers) to have everyone "turn on their cameras" during sessions, meetings, etc. may come partly from that need to feel that the information you have shared has landed. 

The Teams/Zoom/etc. thumbsup 👍 is sometimes seen used in this way during group learning or sessions, but feels comparatively vague and unreliable. 

and.... where are you from?

Questions to start a conversation is a core part of online course building, of course. Why have you decided to join us on this course? is a classic up there with Well, what do you do?

Hm. I am procrastinating by doing this course. I actually need to be building an online course. But I don't want it to contribute the heavy exhausting online digital task burden we are all labouring under constantly at the moment. I want it underpinned by principles of digital wellbeing. So I'm starting by gathering ideas about how to do this. 

That probably has covered most of my key learning aims for completing this course, although there is another; I am recovering from illness and building up my speed at both reading and writing. Ideally I ought to be doing this as an exercise, a bit a day. That has not really happened. 

Final question is as ever: How will you use the information you get from this course? Well, the course is linked to my area of work, but this is coming from a very different angle from my usual work task space of social care's preoccupation with digital risk and safeguarding and online child protection. 

This library and information studies approach of providing core information and enabling the individual to construct their own actions and solutions is very crucial in Early Help practice, and a space I hope to develop.

DO put your daughter on the internet Ms Worth

Two odd things this week; I've been asked to talk as part of Women in Engineering day, and I ended up with someone on one of my e-safety course feeling so aware of the risks that they felt they should close their social networking presences. I feel bad about both, but not really for different reasons. Both have to do with gender, visibility, and the difficulty of pressing out into the unknown.

Disclaimer; I am a woman, but I'm not an engineer. Lots of my friends are software engineers, or work in data and systems and web. My background is web and communications, not web and development. But there are many ways in which you can't really separate the content from the medium/function and in common with many others who started work as web something-or-other I have over the years drifted techwards, fuelled by a desire to help make things work better. I have also found myself acting as translator and advocate for back-room systems and it was in this spirit I polled my friends and rolled their opinions into a short talk on being a woman in ITC and engineering.

 Not ready yet, but here are three points, by way of a sneak preview:

1. The sort of person you are is more important than whether you are or are not a woman when it comes to entering the ICT/engineering field. However, it will have an effect on your career because of the attitudes of other people you will meet professionally. How this goes will depend on your workplace, but it can go very well (also badly).
2. Having social and professional contacts within the field and having the confidence and entitlement to exploit them fully really mattered. Jobs (not all jobs, but many, and many that were important in the careers described) were gained through parents, partners, friends, social contacts. Everyone does it; don't fear it.
3. Although you may well get paid less than male colleagues, and suffer more hassle and harassment (though you might not) you will still earn more and more regularly and more steadily than most, all for a job you (pretty much) enjoy, working with people you (pretty much) get along with.

Digested down still further, this says; "Don't fear going somewhere new, even when it attracts problems. Use your social contacts, don't fear them. Don't worry about doing worse than other people, as long as you're doing well enough, it doesn't matter."

Which was very, very close to the arguments I was making for keeping your social networking presence.

recovering from the personal effectiveness course

It's been a couple of weeks since I went on the Personal Effectiveness Course, and I've just about recovered. No disrespect to the trainer (she was very good) the course content (some interesting insights) or the training arrangements (nothing like being presented with an assertiveness challenge partway through the day), but, let's face it, if a person has problems with assertiveness, effectiveness and so on, there is, by definition, a problem. Problems are seldom sorted out by a few useful insights; this presents the beginning of the work.

I have the usual issues common to operational, hands-on staff with training around "personal improvement". I feel it's sort of waffy and handwavy, dancing around the work without actually getting on with it. In this spirit I've set aside time each week to complete training that will improve my effectiveness and capabilities at work -- those clear goals and that work focus help me feel satisfied that the training is valid use of my time, but at the same time, most courses start or involve a bit of personal improvement.

There was the usual round of reprove/excuse/allow over my doodling during the session, but as you can see from the page below, it didn't really slow me down. So, what struck me?

The notes on trying to form a relationship is related to people (including bosses) feeling annoyed or overly distracted when people socialise at work. While the option of just telling people (or requiring them) to do things is available for a few lucky people, most need regularly renewed social connection to avoid awkwardness when sharing out work. Social glue becomes a lubricant to progress.

My bulleted list refers to the triple preventers of progress.

• Me getting angry and frustrated,
• people going silent,
• agreements not leading to action.

I was looking for answers to these problems, and didn't really get them. I have a lot of tips and tricks for calming myself already, and I know about lists and faulty thinking and triggers and so on and so forth. This section of the course depressed me, and the "we instruct people how to treat us" doodle hits the crux of the problem. There was the usual discussion of family roles and how these direct your interactions as an adult. For some people, this is a revealing insight, but for those who grew up in difficult emotional situations, this statement can arrive like a life sentence; the abused destined always to perform their negative, reactive, limited roles, the abusers able to merrily carry on in intentional absolution.

I would rather believe that you can put away your childhood habits, those bad communication glitches learned from difficult family interactions, and learn to operate with other people -- colleagues especially -- as a rational, respectful and kind adult. That way, as you move along social connections, as you increase them, you can set aside childish things and ways of behaving.


P.S. I've included the picture of my cat because the internet requires kittens; the face of increased financial anxiety is something we all wear from time to time.

will anybody use a ning?

I went to chat to a young volunteer who was keen to support a local youth council/forum group to make a website yesterday. They'd done some layouts in word, and wanted to know about "what was possible"?

It's very much one of those "how long is a piece of string?" questions. If you want to buy a web address, get some web space, and knock together something using the free templates provided, you just can, assuming you've got no problem with shelling out a few dollars, know a bit of html and are prepared to fiddle with the settings a bit. Setting up a blog and sorting out some photo hosting and tying it into a Facebook Group is even easier and completely free.

In fact, it's so easy, that the world is littered with built-and-abandoned websites, blogs, streams profiles and forums. So I asked them a few questions:

• What do you need the website for?
• What are the expectations of the young people?
• How will you maintain it?

They're going back to the group to ask about the first two (they'd already considered the third, well done!). I've also suggested that they ask around the group to find out:

• Which social networking site is most widely used and would they like a group set up?
• Is there a young person with experience of creating websites who could make them a website?
• Here's what I can do for you, is it what you want?

They were, however, disappointed. They wanted me to recommend a short training course that would teach the young volunteer how to make a website, ideally one run by the volunteer's manager's employer. Then she would make the website.

Maybe I should be running one. I'm sure I wrote one, a few years ago.

But, instead, I suggested that they set up a Ning. I'm in three or four, and I think they ought to fit the needs of a group of young people who want something to be:

• Separate from the main social networking sites
• Serious in appearance and use, but easily cutomisable and flexible
• Friendly to multimedia content
• Closed, only accessible to a particular group

I don't know if they'll go for it yet, but the last two groups I suggested it to did not, and I'm still not quite sure why not -- or why I don't use my Nings as much as I should, for that matter.

Although it might have something to do with the comment notification, which irritates me every time it turns up; it says there's a comment, but not what it says. It has that in common with Fiends Reunited; it won't tell you what's going on until you're actually on the site. And frankly, that's not very social.