The disturbing story of the very young Australian boy feeding small zoo animals to larger ones, raises all kinds of questions and parallels.

In the past year more than 20 teenagers have hanged themselves in the area around the small borough of Bridgend in South Wales, UK. Why they did it remains unanswered and is baffling parents, police, experts and the authorities.

In America the phenomenon of high school kids shooting up their campuses, then turning the guns on themselves, probably comes from the same root cause.

The police say they were not all members of any web-based suicide cult, although a few of them may have used the chatrooms. They didn’t all know each other either, and didn’t constitute a group or gang. So what is happening here?

Bridgend is a rather nice area, surrounded by glorious countryside, including the Vale of Ogmore and Merthyr Mawr, a wild place of sand dunes and beaches. It’s also near to the upmarket Vale of Glamorgan, a wealthy patch of rolling, green hills and country pubs. There are many worse places to live.

They did all have one thing in common though. Like all modern teenagers they were immersed in social networking sites — Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and some with the virtual world of Second Life.

Their inner space was formed by the anarchistic conversations of mainly unknown “friends” made on these addictive sites. No settled discourse this, but a 24/7 babble of wildly differing opinions, rants and life objectives, generously sprinkled with bizarre fantasies incapable of fulfilment in the real world.

And there’s the crunch — “the real world”. It really is a second life on these sites, bearing little resemblance to the day to day concerns of older people. That, of course, is their attraction.

The sites’ main competitor is “the real world”, that space of dismal state schooling; urgent demands on climate change of which we are ingenuously presented as the main cause; the breakdown of our ethical system and its replacement with social Marxism (political correctness and obsessive equality) and the bureaucratic autism of the governing class.

The world they look out on is one of cynical politicians on the make, advertisements that make them crave objects they know they don’t really need, and an adult generation that has allowed chaos to reign. The idealism of youth is quickly spent.

Add to all that, mass immigration and the introduction of cruel medieval practices, gang culture, knife crime and drug-based gun law, and the Britain they live in no longer has the moral or physical authority to demand their loyalty.

Teenagers today like nothing better than to “get wrecked” — hopelessly drunk — most nights of the week. Without boundaries to make sense of their lives, or any compelling lodestar to guide them, modern youth sinks into the apparent benign world of social networking.

The outer world gives them nothing but information-overload characterized by countless pressure groups competing for their attention with contradictory messages and injunctions. Good parents get drowned out, as do decent teachers.

Even the government is now just one voice among many, chopping and changing its empty slogans on a daily basis. Thought anarchy rules the lives of young people, an unpleasant environment for mental development to take place.

So, social networking they go. The problem is, it has a very thin actuality. Quickly they discover it hasn’t the substance to satisfy their need for experience and the challenges that promote growth of character and individuality. They are trapped in a no-man’s land between a wafer-thin second life and an unbearable jungle of squabbling claim and counter-claim in the world itself. No wonder many are taking their own lives.

Social networks can be dangerous places to be if you are immature and seeking experiences that should come from life itself.

John Evans

I’ve been on Twitter for a few weeks now, so I should give some sort of account of it, especially as I said I would.

I have remained very wary about “following” too many people — with good cause. So far I’ve only added 24, but already when I logon in the morning there are pages and pages of back messages, mainly by a handful of scribes who tell me what they had for breakfast, how many cups of coffee they imbibed yesterday, and then list all the meetings they’ve got throughout the day, before embarking on a marathon to ‘n’ fro with obscure individuals with names like Plodoff, CrankyAss and LowFalutin’ (I made those up to avoid embarrassing real people).

I’ve taken to skimming deftly through those Tweetaramas now, allowing around 5 seconds per page.

The most valuable facility is the “Replies” folder which holds all messages aimed directly at you (@Syntagma) which are very much fewer than the general river of Tweets. I could easily get by with a few Tweets a day, plus references to the Replies cache.

However, I’ve also enabled my cellphone/mobile to receive mobile Tweets. I’ve no idea what they are, but suspect they are “direct messages” which are sent as texts. I seem to have a limit of 250. Maybe after that they will charge my account. Who knows? I’ll be sure to turn it off when they do.

I do have some rather prestigious “Web 2.0″ people following me. Check the list. Some of them are quite interesting in a Web 2.0 sort of way. So far no Web 3.0 followers — maybe they’re too busy semanticizing about the future.

The real problem with Twitter, as with all social networks, is its addictive qualities. It’s so easy to drown in the stuff. If you work for a living online, as I do, it’s vital to rein in your expressive tendencies. Tweets pay no bills (pun not intended).

Indeed, Tweeting will undermine your ability to post content on your sites as it can drain away your creative juices before you’ve even begun the day’s work. Faced with a long, detailed piece to write, the ease of a <140 character post spoils you for the harder task. Better to Twitter in 5-minute spurts two or three times a day.

If, as many do, you attempt to document your entire day as it passes, you are a gonna. As in "gone with the birds" -- no pun intended.

I'll stick with it for now, highlighting the occasional post, like this one -- using tinyurl.com to reduce the character count of the link -- and see where it takes me. As the numbers of my followers mount, I see dimly the name of Alfred Hitchcock materializing in my mind's eye.

I’ve just joined Twitter — for technical reasons, I hasten to add.

A pair of lovebirds twittering

The technical reason is that I discovered that the username “Syntagma” had not been taken, so I secured it in perpetuity — or as long as any social network lasts, whichever is the shorter.

I’ve sprayed my entire Gmail address book with invites, so you may get one. Since it’s still over 300 addresses long, even after drastic pruning, I’m awaiting the results with some trepidation.

So far, I have one tweet on my sheet, a brilliant piece of literature about what I’ve been doing today. Please don’t all rush at once to view it or you may bring the server down.

If anyone wants to follow or be followed, just send a tweet to Syntagma. I’m sure the system will handle all the techie stuff. I still haven’t found my way around it all yet.

I will, naturally, produce a comprehensive analysis of the service soon. In under 140 characters, of course.

You know, maybe that’s where they’re going wrong.

The twitter is beginning to sound a bit strangulated now. Like a flock of birds flying through a cloud of grapeshot.

Hugh Macleod’s cartoon sending up Twitter mania

It seems both Hugh Macleod (the gaping void — see cartoon above) and Robert Scoble are coming off Twitter, that maddeningly insistent waster of time for busy professionals who regularly protest about email-overload but tweet happily throughout the day to thousands of “followers”. Jeremy Wright too has whipped the twittering hierglyphics off his blog. At last sense has returned to the Techmeme crowd.

It’s becoming clear that the much derided New York Times article last Sunday, which pictured exhausted bloggers stumbling to early graves, has had an effect. Here at Syntagma we responded to the piece by suggesting a flight from Twitter as a first step to sanity.

Does anyone in real life speak in batches of 140 characters? I thought not. It’s so obviously an artificial way of communicating. And the way each twit begins with @fredbloggs as if a gun is being fired at his head, is very disconcerting.

The whole thing has got out of hand and GapingVoid’s cartoon gets it in a nutshell.

In recent months seventeen teenagers have hanged themselves in the area around the small borough of Bridgend in South Wales, UK. Why they did it remains unanswered and is baffling the nation.

In America the phenomenon of high school kids shooting up their campuses, then turning the guns on themselves, probably comes from the same root cause.

The police say they were not all members of any web-based suicide cult, although a few of them may have used the chatrooms. They didn’t all know each other either, and didn’t constitute a group or gang. So what is happening here?

Bridgend is a rather nice area, surrounded by glorious countryside, including the Vale of Ogmore and Merthyr Mawr, a wild place of sand dunes and beaches. It’s also near to the upmarket Vale of Glamorgan, a wealthy patch of rolling, green hills and country pubs. There are many worse places to live.

They did all have one thing in common though. Like all modern teenagers they were immersed in social networking sites — Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Their inner space was formed by the anarchistic conversations of mainly unknown “friends” made on these addictive sites. No settled discourse this, but a 24/7 babble of wildly differing opinions, rants and life objectives, generously sprinkled with bizarre fantasies incapable of fulfilment in the real world.

And there’s the crunch — “the real world”. It really is a second life on these sites, bearing little resemblance to the day to day concerns of older people. That, of course, is their attraction.

The sites’ main competitor is “the real world”, that space of dismal state schooling; urgent demands on climate change of which we are ingenuously presented as the main cause; the breakdown of our ethical system and its replacement with social Marxism (political correctness and obsessive equality) and the bureaucratic autism of the governing class.

The world they look out on is one of cynical politicians on the make, advertisements that make them crave objects they know they don’t really need, and an adult generation that has allowed chaos to reign. The idealism of youth is quickly spent.

Add to all that, mass immigration and the introduction of cruel medieval practices, gang culture, knife crime and drug-based gun law, and the Britain they live in no longer has the moral or physical authority to demand their loyalty.

Teenagers today like nothing better than to “get wrecked” — hopelessly drunk — most nights of the week. Without boundaries to make sense of their lives, or any compelling lodestar to guide them, modern youth sinks into the apparent benign world of social networking.

The outer world gives them nothing but information-overload characterized by countless pressure groups competing for their attention with contradictory messages and injunctions. Good parents get drowned out, as do decent teachers. Even the government is now just one voice among many, chopping and changing its empty slogans on a daily basis. Thought anarchy rules the lives of young people, an unpleasant environment for mental development to take place.

So, social networking they go. The problem is, it has a very thin actuality. Quickly they discover it hasn’t the substance to satisfy their need for experience and the challenges that promote growth of character and individuality. They are trapped in a no-man’s land between a wafer-thin second life and an unbearable jungle of squabbling claim and counter-claim in the world itself. No wonder many are taking their own lives.

Social networks can be dangerous places to be if you are immature and seeking experiences that should come from life itself.