Following the mass media coverage of Aric Sigman’s paper on the ‘biological implications of social networking’, to which I added my own response yesterday, the Institute of Biology has made the paper publicly available.

And there are two good responses to reading the paper available already, and well worth reading.

The first is by Charles Arthur on the Guardian technology blog, which is a pretty fair and balanced look at the paper.

And the second is a great examination of the findings by the National Health Service Choices site. (Cheers to @peeebeee for the tip)

Both point out that the description of the paper and the subsequent reporting appears to have made a jump from the actual research into the implications of isolation, to claiming that social networking is causing isolation without any evidence.

‘A Facebook poke cannot replace a good old hug, it seems.’  – from the Insititue of Biology’s own description.

I don’t think anyone would claim replacing physical contact with humans with digital contact exclusively would be a desirable aim – which is probably why so many online social networks are devoted to enabling people to connect and then meet in the real world – Facebook events, online dating, barcamps, unconferences, travel networks etc.

For instance, I love the latest blog post from travel network Dopplr – highlighting that there were 250,000+ times travellers were coincidentally in the same place and could have shared dinner etc.

I don’t think the debate about the potential health risks (physical and mental) of changing work and leisure should be dismissed or hidden. I just fear that, as often happens, the sensible debate gets buried under soundbites to the point that any realistic recommendations are ignored because people have become tired of the subject.