Neknominating: why it's here and how to end it

Social networking is a great boon in so many areas of life. Not least among its benefits is the potential for sharing ideas over large distances. Mass communication has given rise to mass collaboration, the age of "we-think". This is opening new windows of opportunity for scientific research and development, activism and political engagement. Even healthcare is affected, as people have begun to put their raw health data online and invite others, both lay people and professionals, to advise them on how to manage illness.

For the Millennial under-30 generation, social media is as part of the background music of life as TV was for baby boomers. Millennials are the world's first digital natives and have grown up with binary technologies in a truly symbiotic relationship. The technology has shaped their thinking, while their unique generational worldview and mindset have in turn shaped the development and acceptance of new technologies.

So much of our human interaction is conducted via digital media that it's becoming relatively easy to disconnect, should we choose to, from the physical world around us. As a result it can be harder to maintain a healthy sense of big-picture perspective.

Therein lies the danger of social media when it comes to extreme behaviour patterns, including those involved with neknomination. What looks harmless when seen from a distance, via a 2D smartphone screen, may not be so harmless when it's happening in 3D real life, up close and personal.

Linked to the false sense of familiarity - and therefore safety - created by social media is the growing challenge of shortened attention spans. An academic study released a few weeks ago suggests that the average human attention span during online activities is now down to just eight seconds.

A 2009 study conducted across all the universities in Ontario, Canada found that students were less well prepared for tertiary education than others had been just three years earlier. Why? Because they were less well equipped to follow a standard lecture presentation. Their attention spans were too short and they were too reliant on short-lived, screen-hopping, visual presentations.

I don't for a minute advocate that we turn back the technological clock. Who would want to? (I've written extensively elsewhere on the benefits and possibilities afforded us by the digital revolution - and conducted scores of lectures worldwide on the subject.) We might, however, benefit as a society by taking time to reflect on how much communications platforms like social media are coming to define us rather than serve us.

Technology is amoral. It is human interaction with technology, based on individual choice, which shapes the future.

For their part, young adult Millennials bring to their engagement with social media a very different value system than their parents.

For a demographic cohort that has come to see constant change as the only truly permanent and reliable aspect of life, there is a tendency to tick boxes quickly and move on. Employers often report that young adults jump ship too quickly, moving from job to job without consideration for the time and money that companies spend training them.

In the work space they also seem to ignore traditional measures of hard work. They don't equate application or commitment with the number of hours spent at the office so much as whether specific tasks have been completed. Their philosophy revolves around getting the job done as requested, with the maximum skill at their disposal, and then heading out.

For them, time is a currency that is almost as important as money. Indeed, in many ways money is important to them primarily because of the time it can buy - time to spend with friends, having fun or investing in meaningful causes.