Money Secrets

I don’t often read the news, it’s too full of doom and gloom for my liking. But when I read that the Archbishop of Westminster was linking social networking sites such as Facebook with teenage suicides, I was kind of intrigued to know why.

You can read the full story here, but let’s get something straight. If the only friendships your kids have are those taking place online in whatever social network they’re associated with, then regardless of whether they are more likely to commit suicide or not, they have a real problem, and as a parent, you should be taking some action.

Now of course, the news service has over dramatised the whole thing. And if you read what he’s really saying, you’ll probably agree.

He’s not wrong. Nobody should be living their life based solely on interacting online. Do you really want to live your life tied to a computer? Crikey, what will you do if your Internet connection goes down?

But there’s a real lesson here for those in the marketing game who also think that the life of their business is linked to the number of ‘friends’ they can add to their social networking profiles. The number of your so called ‘friends’ doesn’t count for diddly squat! Go check out some Social Networking Advice if you think that it does.

I’m not convinced that socialising online is going to lead to an increase in teenage suicides, but I’m pretty damn certain it will lead to the demise of more home businesses if you think it comes down to the number of folks on your ‘friend list’.