There have been some comments online and intext that the 21st century love affair with social media engagement means that young people are growing up without a clue how to have interpersonal relationships. Indeed, this extends to horror stories of kids texting one another across the same room; of social spaces like youth clubs, cafes, churches closing down because we are all locked into our individual social media cocoon. CODEC are exploring some of the issues behind this at the moment.

Is it true that social media cuts people off? Sometimes! Is it true that people using cars crash them! Sometimes! It's about the use of the tool not the inherent danger in the tool!

You can see lots of ways over at BigBible where our #digidisciple program is showing that this need not be the case.

Indeed, other research just out from Pew Internet at the Pew Research Center suggests that while initially social media involvement can make people more isolated, people who socialise on social media are much more sociable in real life! Go figure! Lol!  You can find the full report here.

Meanwhile over on his Posterous site, our research director has been blogging about internet usage and then about mobile internet usage with a few questions about where Asian mobile is heading.  There's an interesting mock interview he did on social media here too!

Enjoy the summer and we'll be back in the Autumn with a new seminar series and lots of events happening.

By the way - have you see the Christian New Media Conference yet?  Going to be good and CODEC are organising the theology strand looking at Creativity, Imagination and the Digital Age.  Going to be so good.

Finally, if you are at Greenbelt, come and say hi at our stand in GSource!

Pete