According to a press release:
"Sport England and Facebook have announced a new partnership that will transform the way sports bodies engage with participants as they deliver a lasting Olympic legacy of one million people playing more sport."
Is this a good thing or not?
The article goes on to state that at the heart of this initiative, which is intended to get 12,000 students doing sport in the next four months, is the Sport Hub. This is, from the sound of it, like a Facebook fan page on steroids, and includes such functionality as the ability to organise sports events. (I thought you could do that anyway. Perhaps there is a more dedicated tool than simply the announcements you can make?)
I'm not really into sport, to be honest, and so on that level I have little interest in this news. However, despite the possibility that if Facebook is seen as having become mainstream young people will start to leave it in droves, I have to say that I regard this kind of development as a good thing.
Why? Because it seems to me that if you want to engage people in anything, you have to go to where they are. And you have to use the most appropriate tools for bringing them to you. We are constantly hearing about the negative aspects of Facebook and other forms of web-based social networking, but the fact is that any application can be used for good or otherwise (see The internet – empowering or censoring citizens?), and can be used wisely or unwisely. That is why I have always been of the opinion that schools, rather than ban the use of sites like Facebook, should teach young people how to be safe in them.
Back to Sport England: the 'hidden curriculum' aspect of this partnership, of course, is that it conveys the message that social networking is mainstream, and is OK.
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