Apparently, military personnel with a smart phone stand the risk of being pinpointed by the enemy. Such phones have a GPS or other means of determining a user's location. Location services do not automatically show a user's location; generally the user must manually enter the application or program for his or her location to show up. Nevertheless, the risk still exists. And with 95,000 troops in Afghanistan and 50,000 in Iraq, the Air Force and other divisions of the U.S. military are not taking any chances and sent warnings to everybody.
Before I dwell into the meat of the story, I first want to address the elephant in the room. Soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq can access Facebook? They actually have the data networks in war-torn countries to sustain mobile social networking? Apparently they do.
Even more questions arise from this article: Why are soldiers carrying around Blackberries and iPhones? And most pressingly for me, why is Facebook even offered to military personnel?
We know all too well that Facebook often spawns procrastination and inactivity. Offering such a service to members of the military nears irresponsibility. Soldiers should be kept vigilant and sharp, and kept away from things that distract them from their overall mission. I'm not opposed to giving soldiers free time and entertainment. But to offer them Facebook, which encourages procrastination and now potentially endangers the military, is too much.
5 comments:
Yes, troops might procrastinate being able to access Facebook, but we have to remember that troops are thousands of miles away from home and feel a need to contact their loved ones. With Facebook troops can easily keep in touch with their family and friends, view photos, listen to new music, and feel as though they never left home. War brings loneliness and stress and the troops could use Facebook to feel better in such a tough situation. Facebook might make troops distracted, but their thoughts and worries about loved ones could just as easily keep their heads in the clouds. If troops use Facebook in tasteful amounts of time and make sure to not disclose their locations, I think they should definetley be allowed to use Facebook.
-Sandy Frank
Sandy, you make an excellent point I didn't think about. Facebook is a definitely a way to stay in touch with loved ones, and taking that away would be awful. I still feel Facebook will lead to procrastination, but it is very much possible to take steps to allow soldiers to use Facebook while keeping the entire military both on-task and safe.
I think that there is a difference between how we use Facebook here and how they probably use it in war zones. In reality, as Sandy said, soldiers use Facebook to communicate with their families at home. We, however, use Facebook mainly to talk to people we see every day about relatively unimportant things in our lives. I doubt that they are carrying phones and accessing Facebook while they are fighting, but there is a lot of down time in war when soldiers are off duty. In past wars, this time was spent playing cards with other off duty soldiers and writing letters home; now that time is spent communicating directly with their family.
In terms of the other point of the post, I believe the military was right to warn the soldiers about accessing Facebook's new location features. There is a definite danger to allowing others to identify where soldiers are, but I fear that it will be very difficult to effectively restrain all of the thousands of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan from using those features. The question that comes as a result of that unfortunate reality is: What will the military do to prevent the Taliban/ insurgents from using that information online against our forces?
Soldiers should always be on the lookout during a war, and social networks only spell distraction. I agree with Sandy that soldiers should keep in touch with their loved ones, but it does pose a risk. That's why they have letters they send out and receive. The US military does not want to build a reputation where they go on the Internet during duty, that's not why they're fighting a war. They're fighting to preserve liberty, democracy, and freedom.
Sandy has a valid point; Facebook is an awesome way to keep in touch with loved ones back home. I don't think, however, that having a mobile device on hand, where the solider can access it at any time is acceptable. We need our troops to have one main objective: get the job done. The idea of having Facebook that easily on hand is the biggest distraction they can be given. Just think of us teenagers in the US? We already have our hectic lives full of fun and excitement, yet we still spend countless hours on facebook. Think of how miserable the lives of the soliders are; what else can they do then spend countless hours on Facebook as well? The risk of being that distracted-maybe someone getting hurt as a result- wasn't worth sending that facebook message.
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