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PAGE 4A
BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2017
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
The ills of
social media
If you’ve never seen the 2010 film “The Social
Network,” which tells the story of how Mark
Zuckerberg started Facebook and the legal battles
that followed that creation, I would highly recom
mend it.
It’s a fascinating look at how a genius with very
few friends had the ambition to start the next big
thing and created a social network site where
“friends” could be gained at the click of a button.
I’m not sure if the real Zuckerberg, who started
the site as a network specifically for Harvard stu
dents, could have ever seen
how big this would truly
become. But as one char
acter in the film put it, this
was a “once-in-a-generation,
holy (bleep) idea.”
The site grew from
Harvard to other Ivy
Leagues, to other colleges
and universities, to high
school students, and now
has millions of people from
ages 13 to 100 on it.
Facebook has become
ingrained in our collective
conscience. It’s a de facto home page for many
people when they go on the internet. For many
others, it’s always up in the background even if
they’re not actively perusing it.
Facebook can be a wonderful tool that allows
people to keep in touch with family members and
dear friends who might live in other parts of the
country or world. It can be a source of reconnec
tion between people who haven’t seen or heard
from each other in years. It provides a sense of
community that so many people long for.
But there are downsides to this.
One of the most common criticisms of social
media sites, especially Facebook, are that they are
a false substitute for genuine human connection,
that a virtual friendship with someone can only
go so far and that they may alienate some people
even further from talking to real human beings in
person.
Another is that it could decrease productivity.
Many companies rely on Facebook for commu
nication.
Even our organization and other media groups
have found it useful before in terms of learning
about investigative stories under the surface, or
about a family in need of help and more public
awareness.
But it’s also easy to be unproductive on the inter
net throughout the work day, and I’ve probably
been as guilty of it as many of you at some point.
Another is that privacy isn’t valued like perhaps
it should be and sometimes people can put too
much information about themselves out there.
But what Facebook has further exploited is the
general nastiness people are capable of perpetu
ating against one another.
In my nearly 10 years on Facebook, I’ve seen
a lot of manufactured drama started on there
between people who took to the keyboard or key
pad on their phone to make declarations instead
of reaching out and talking to someone to work
out their differences.
It can only serve to distract from real issues like
cyberbullying that seems to be becoming more
prevalent.
In many cases, civility on social media really
became secondary during the politically charged
2016 and the hyper-partisan presidential election
that accompanied it.
It’s still lingering today as protests of the new
administration continue to mount and people
take to their keyboards to essentially shout without
having a real conversation or attempting to listen
to others.
Facebook has become a haven for politically
motivated fake news.
Did you know Donald Trump takes a hair-loss
product associated with memory loss and con
fusion?
It’s disturbing that so many people take false
content generated in a basement in Ukraine so
seriously.
Many folks I know have scrapped their Facebook
accounts because they can’t take the political
handwringing and grandstanding any longer. I
myself don’t mind engaging in political discus
sions with people, but that’s not what we really
get. Instead, we get shallow memes. (I’d rather get
invited to play Candy Crush 1,000 times over than
have to see another one of those memes simpli
fied on an elementary-school level.)
If “de-friending” someone over their political
views is the preferred path to talking through
issues and respecting different points of view,
what does it say about us?
As an old high school friend of mine recently
quipped, Facebook was betterwhen you answered
a survey about your favorite color, movie, etc., but
I’m sure in today’s environment, you could proba
bly have some fights and lawsuits over that.
Much like the internet itself, for all its benefits,
social media might be one of the worst things ever
to happen to society.
Scott Thompson is editor of the Barrow News-
Journal. He can be reached at sthompson@bar-
rownewsjournal. com.
Georgia can climb out of last
place on these two issues
What should be the priority for state
legislators: helping their poorest con
stituents avoid pain and suffering, or
protecting the financial status of their
most affluent constituents?
In the case of Georgia lawmakers,
the answer has traditionally
been to take care of the wealthy.
There is a state law that
says dental hygienists cannot
provide basic services such
as teeth cleanings in settings
like school clinics and nursing
homes unless a dentist is pres
ent to provide “direct supervi
sion.”
This means that thousands of
low-income Georgians will suf
fer from tooth decay and gum
diseases because they can’t
afford to go to the dentist.
Sam Whitehead of GPB filed a com
pelling report on how the law affects
Turner County Elementary School,
located in the south Georgia town of
Ashburn where more than a quarter
of the population lives below the pov
erty line.
A free dental clinic was set up at the
elementary school that is equipped
with dental chairs and related medical
equipment.
A nonprofit group called Turner
Family Connection bought the equip
ment three years ago so that kids who
couldn’t afford a trip to the dentist
might at least be able to get teeth
cleanings and fluoride treatments.
No such luck.
No children have been treated at
the clinic because there aren’t many
dentists in that part of the state and
the law, as we pointed out, makes it
illegal for hygienists to provide these
services unless a dentist is physically
on site.
Georgia is one of only three states
- Alabama and Mississippi are the
others - that still make it illegal for
hygienists to do this.
Why is such an absurd statute
allowed to remain on the books?
Because dentists, like doctors, are a
powerful group of professionals who
can afford to have lobbyists represent
them at the capitol.
There are some dentists who don’t
want to see their revenue streams
threatened by these safety net clinics
that provide free dental care for poor
people, so their lobbyists have worked
hard to keep the state law from being
amended.
That situation appears to be chang
ing this year.
Bills that would repeal the require
ment for “direct supervision” were
introduced in both chambers and are
making their way through the legisla
tive process.
The House and Senate both voted
last week to approve their versions of
the bill.
“This will help provide much-need
ed preventive dental care to children
and senior citizens in areas where
they can’t be reached,” Rep. Matt
Hatchett (R-Dublin) said.
Write a Letter to the Editor:
Let us know your thoughts: Send
Letters to Editor, The Barrow
News-Journal, 77 E. May Street,
Winder, Ga. 30680. Letters can also be
sent to sthompson@barrownewsjoumal.
com. Please put “Letter to the Editor” in
the subject line. Please include the city
of the writer.
Rep. Lee Hawkins (R-Gainesville), a
legislator who is also a dentist, is one
of the sponsors of the House bill.
“All in all, if it helps more children
access dental care, then we have done
a good day’s work,” Hawkins said.
If one or both of the
bills are passed, Georgia
can finally climb out of
last place among the
states that still have this
prohibition in law.
Speaking of prohibi
tion, our state is in last
place in an entirely dif
ferent category.
Georgia and
Mississippi have been
the last two states that
still make it illegal for
craft brewers and local
distillers to sell their products directly
to customers.
This law is a holdover from the pro
hibition era, and like the prohibitions
against dental hygienists, it looks the
state may finally get rid of it.
The protected class in this case are
the wholesalers.
They don’t produce beer and dis
tilled spirits at the manufacturing end
and they don’t sell it to customers on
the retail end.
Craft brewers and distillers, howev
er, are required to sell their products
to wholesalers, who turn around and
sell it to package stores.
The law enables wholesalers to
extract a fee for serving as the middle
man between the producers and the
sellers, and this fee is part of the price
consumers pay when they drink beer
or other alcoholic beverages.
This system has been in place for
a long time, but some of the younger
legislatures have been asking why the
law should be interfering with how
brewers sell their beer.
Bills allowing retail sales by local
brewers and distillers are making their
way through the system during this
session and it looks like they might
pass.
Georgia may be able to climb out of
last place on this issue as well.
Tom Crawford is editor of The
Georgia Report, an internet news ser
vice at gareport.com that reports on
state government and politics. He can
be reached at tcrawford@gareport.
com.
The Barrow News-Journal
Winder, Barrow County, Ga.
www.BarrowJoumal.com
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher
Scott Thompson Editor
Jessica Brown Photographer
Susan Treadwell Advertising
Sharon Hogan Office & Reporter
Also covering beats are Ron Bridgeman and Alex Pace.
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mike
buffington
Is your job safe?
Will you have a job in five years? Or 10
years?
Maybe not, if some predictions about
our economic future are accurate.
Technology — computers and robotics
— are rapidly changing the face of our
workforce.
Beginning around
1990, our economy
began to shift out of
a mature Industrial
Revolution and
into a Technology
Revolution. The
result of that could
be the loss of mil
lions of jobs in the
coming years as
some business
es die and others
become highly automated.
This isn’t the first time the world has
seen such a change. From the late 1700s
to the middle of the 20th Century, indus
trialization dramatically changed our
economic and labor landscape. Trains,
power looms, steamships, the telephone,
phonograph, lightbulb, cars, airplanes,
radio, television, air conditioning, antibi
otics and thousands of other inventions
changed our economy dramatically.
Some jobs were lost while new jobs
were created.
Just think about how Northeast Georgia
looked in 1930s. We were largely an agri
culturally-based economy. Rural areas
didn’t have electricity yet. The Great
Depression created havoc in the area.
Rural farmers began to transition off the
land and into factories, mostly textile
manufacturing.
Between the end of WWII and 2000,
the economy changed even more. Full
time farming declined. Textile manufac
turing peaked, but then moved overseas.
The economy shifted toward service
based jobs — retail, banking, insurance,
real estate, restaurants, etc.
Other areas of the country changed,
too. Air conditioning pulled manufactur
ing out of the North and into the South.
The advent of our interstate system and
the growth in air travel dramatically
changed where people lived and how
they did their jobs.
Now, we’re seeing another major shift.
Bank of America is experimenting with
self-serve banking locations that are total
ly automated. These “robo-banks” threat
en to make bank tellers, and other tra
ditional banking jobs, obsolete. Online
loans, an increasing use of debit and
credit cards and online banking, espe
cially with cell phones, is revolutionizing
the financial industry.
The Washington Post recently quoted
former banker and former U.S. Senator
Peter Fitzgerald as saying, “Bank branch
es are dead. They were killed by the
iPhone.”
But it’s not just banking that may lose
service jobs. Self-serve checkouts at gro
cery and other stores is growing. Fast
food restaurants are starting to automate
(I went into an automated McDonald’s
in Australia last year where we ordered
food on a computer screen.) And com
puters have already replaced many sec
retarial jobs that were once a major entry
into the workplace for women.
Retailing is changing, too, as online
ordering has grown putting pressure on
traditional bricks-and-mortar stores and
the jobs they offer.
That online landscape has also
changed other traditional service job
markets — automotive sales, real estate
and insurance all come to mind.
Some of these service jobs are not
high-paying, but they serve as entry level
positions for young and lower-skilled
workers who don’t have a college degree.
Where will those people find jobs in this
new automated economy?
Beyond these changes to the ser
vice sector, robotics and automation is
already dramatically changing manufac
turing jobs. The loss of automotive jobs
isn’t just because of foreign plants, it’s
mostly due to robotics.
And coal miners aren’t losing their jobs
due to overwrought environmental regu
lations, they’ve lost jobs to automation,
too. Most of our coal doesn’t come from
West Virginia, it comes from Wyoming.
The reason is that through automation,
the open mines in Wyoming produce 28
tons of coal per hour while West Virginia
mines produce only 2.4 tons per hour.
(Competition from natural gas is even
a larger part of the problems in coal
country.)
See Buffington on Page 6A