This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most of the time we evangelists are, ourselves, fairly new to all of this and so are unaware of all the potential implications.

For a start, it never dawned on me that by using Twitter I could find my comments, accompanied by my name and profile information, feeding into a BBC news page; or that by moderating comments on my blog I become legally responsible for their content.

A friend on Twitter today asked if someone could write an article explaining social reporting, and in reply was pointed to a post by Paul Henderson which said:

“social reporters get the offline stuff online, then you can link to it, comment on it, aggregate it, remix it”.

I think that’s a good, brief definition. In the context of this post I would add that if we are encouraging social reporting then we should also be helping people to understand how their published content may be used, and that while that may be exciting it is also mostly out of their control.

A couple of weeks ago Stuart Parker persuaded Jon Hickman and myself to have a conversation on film around the question ‘What is a digital mentor?‘. As a result I suggested to a few friends that maybe (and crudely speaking) a ’social media consultant’ helps people to use and get the most out of the tools, and a ‘digital mentor’ has a more pastoral role. From their replies I got the impression I may be in a minority regarding this distinction, but one respondent confirmed that I wasn’t alone in my general concerns:

“I’d consider myself very web-literate, but recently I got a potentially libelous comment on one of my blogs that really stumped me. I wrestled with what to do about it for literally days. I am in the lucky position of knowing a couple of excellent web journos … who I felt able to ask for advice.

“In a way, the tech stuff is easier to deal with than the general/etiquette/legal/fuckwittery etc. stuff. We not only need to give people the tools but also the confidence.”

I want to do something practical, but I’m not sure what. Any thoughts welcome!

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In quick summary, the UK government’s Department for Communities & Local Government (CLG) is looking for an organisation to lead on its digital mentor tender. There has been a lot of activity to develop Expressions of Interest, with UK Online Centres being notable for their incredibly open and collaborative approach.

I heard today that out of 41 Expressions of Interest five were chosen: of those five, UK Online Centres (through their Voice Box consortium), Media Trust and National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA) have gone public about being shortlisted.

Anne Faulkner of UK Online Centres has posted a good summary of the discussions so far.

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But what about as a therapeutic activity? Or, rather, as a creative outlet for those of us who may sometimes be uncomfortable in traditional social situations?

I’m not going to begin to try to understand mental health: I’m not a doctor and, as far as I know, I have no mental health issues; and besides it would be presumptuous to suggest that I may have even the merest inkling of how other people understand the world and interact with it. But I wonder if there are benefits of social media for people’s wellbeing, and if so how we harness them and capitalise on them.

I often feel paralyzed by indecision, wanting an outlet for something but not knowing what it is or how to vent it, and terrified of doing the wrong thing or of letting people down. This can lead to an inability to do anything: to change jobs, to tidy the house, to keep in touch with friends; and, somewhat ironically, to say the right thing or avoid letting people down.

Blogging has recently become an outlet, a channel for diverting that sense of helplessness and inertia. Of course I could easily write things down on paper, or try other creative pursuits, but there’s no motivation to; blogging, on the other hand, can be social and interactive while not requiring physical interaction, and therefore can be much more motivating.

But it can also be very dangerous.

I’m forever having conversations in my head with people about things that worry me, though very rarely do I feel able to have them for real. But I do find it very easy to click ‘publish’. That’s incredibly dangerous if you’re feeling vulnerable and are telling the world things they may not want to hear, or that you may regret saying (as I may be in danger of doing here!).

Why am I saying all this?

One of my fears of trying to bridge the ‘digital divide’ (ie between the technologically literate and the disenfranchised) is that of encouraging people into an area way out of their comfort zone and dumping them there, because we hadn’t fully appreciated the subtle but profound adjustments they would need to make and so were not equipped to support them. Therefore addressing the digital divide must be done with great care and sensitivity.

But could it also be an ideal opportunity to help people find ways of channeling their creativity; their worries, angers, sadnesses, excitements, energies, frustrations, joys, exhilerations?

If I can find social media tools (such as blogs and Twitter) to be a dangerously easy way of exposing my vulnerability but simultaneously a rewarding creative outlet, could there be a benefit in the collaboration between different specialisms: ie one that understands developing technologies and one that understands people? For example (at the risk of sounding crass) a collaboration between specialists in social media and in mental health?

I don’t mean that people should be encouraged to pour their hearts out on the internet. I do mean that maybe social media tools could be harnessed as a creative channel for those energies that might otherwise manifest themselves in negative ways.

And maybe collaborations (such as that suggested above) could inform other work which encourages people to explore social media and the internet.

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If (as I have written before) we should be willing to accept that some people will always be more comfortable with offline social interactions than with online ones, then we must also be willing to accept that the opposite will be true too. Some of those who have traditionally found conversation and debate difficult will find a new voice online. And now that there are teenagers whose entire lives have included the internet, I suspect the proportion of society that is less comfortable living offline will have risen dramatically. (I’ve no evidence to back any of this up, mind!)

What then does this mean for bridging the gap between the two? We don’t want to push anyone too far out of their comfort zone, but if we’re not very careful the ‘digital divide’ will only widen. ‘Digital mentoring‘ is an idea currently under discussion, but it tends to be discussed in a way that presumes the grass is greener on the digital side of the digital divide.

I would prefer to drop the ‘digital’ from ‘digital mentoring’ (though god knows what I’d replace it with) and concentrate instead on skills of debate and social interaction, bringing expertise from all fields into a two-way learning process.

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I want to endorse the idea of ‘digital mentors‘ [link updated], really I do; but the more I think about it the less able I am to do so.

For a start the funding would run out eventually. Any mentoring programme would therefore reach a finite number of people within a very specific time window. Developments in technology will move on regardless.

More importantly though, what point of understanding would mentors be trying to reach with their charges? What aspects of social media would be seen as important? Would their efforts be welcomed, or would some people rather stay digitally divided?

Definitely I agree that education is as least as important as access to technology, but there’s no point in one without the other. And I think that maybe the education is best embedded in the (ever-evolving) formal structures, so that we can develop a culture of understanding and appreciation of the changing nature of technology and the different speeds and levels at which people adapt to it.

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When this happens – and it happens a lot these days – I feel that I’m on an irreversible and rapid ascent to the peak of my sanity, at which point I shall burn-out: not from work but from trying to keep abreast with technology (and currently with today’s hot potato of ’social media’). I feel like I’m constantly trying to catch-up, desparate not to fall behind. The world is changing incredibly fast; I already feel as though it’s running away and I no longer have the energy to keep up.

It’s inevitable that I (and all of my contemporaries) will eventually become part of the technologically disenfranchised section of society, that we will slip over to the wrong side of the digital divide. Doubtless some of us will fight it off longer than others; but it will happen, as technology develops in ways that we are unable to comprehend within the confines of our experience.

My understanding of the world is already inconcievably different to that of my nieces, whose world has always been inhabited by the internet and mobile phones. My understanding of those technologies was shaped by experience of more than 20 years without them, whereas Vicky and Rebecca are starting from a very different place; consequently they will have a much more profound awareness of technology than I. As with every generation gap, they will have no way of appreciating my understanding of the world and I will have no way of appreciating theirs.

And things are changing more quickly than ever. Life online is much faster than life offline, and that pace is increasing. Yesterday I replied to a tweet (a message via Twitter) ten hours after it was posted because I hadn’t been in front of the internet in that time. I felt I should apologise for the delay, because ten hours is a long time on Twitter.

Although that can happen offline too, it is much easier online to flick back through your messages and catch up with conversations, giving a perspective on the rapid progress of what you’ve missed; while this at least keeps you in the loop, it can also leave you feeling as though you’ll eventually run out of the energy to keep up.

So how do we tackle this problem of a growing digital divide? (And I believe it is growing, and always will: not just access to and understanding of technology, but pace of life, social development and personal education.) Should we be providing people with access to technology? Should we be educating people on how to use it meaningfully? Do we really want offline and online interactions to fuse?

In short, should we be educating to tackle the digital divide or accepting that it’s always going to be there?

The Prime Minister recently pledged £300m to provide internet access to the technologically disadvantaged. There is a ripple of debate around the futility of that, and a suggestion that the money would be better spent on ‘digital mentors‘. Stuart Parker argues: ‘It’s not about the access. The ongoing evolution of the Internet … means that people who are still to use the technology or have limited experience, are being left behind at an unacceptable rate’.

But plenty of people I know want to be left behind. They don’t want to embrace technology completely. They may feel frightened of it, and a little more understanding may even exacerbate that. I may well be one of them. And I suspect the limits of experience and understanding will prevent them (and eventually us, including those charged with the educating) from progressing past a given point.

This isn’t to say that I don’t agree about education being more important than mere access to technology. But I do think we need to think carefully about what that education is. For me it should be as much about understanding how we all live together in a ‘multi-technical’ society as about anything else.

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