Jill Kiedaisch at the Orton Family Foundation offers good insights through her writing. So I was especially pleased to see her attention focused on Front Porch Forum this week. Here’s a tidbit (full post)…
But the coolest thing about FPF in my book is that it upends the assumed role of the Internet in our lives. It asserts that our online lives don’t have to be distinct from our offline lives—that they can merge in healthy, useful, positive, reciprocal ways. And even better than that, Front Porch Forum encourages us to reconnect with each other in person, tªte- -tªte, to have conversations and shake hands and share babysitters and roto-tillers and generally help each other out. It pulls us out of our digital isolation and pushes us back into our front yards and onto the street, out to the park or the playground or the farmer’s market or the local garage to see what’s going on, to remember who we are, and even who we want to be, as parents and friends and citizens. It helps us be neighbors.
The troubling results of a survey were released by Legal & General in the United Kingdom this week… Next Door Strangers. Here’s some expert commentary and sample press coverage. From the summary (my emphasis added)…
A survey of 2,000 British residents, covering a range of ages and geographic locations, revealed that more than one quarter (27%) of us say we “do not trust” our neighbours and most of us (59%) feel we neither have a lot in common with nor share the same values (44%) as them.
The report also found that the majority of British residents don’t know their neighbours’ names and wouldn’t recognise them if they passed them in the street (70%). According to the research, on average, we would only immediately recognise just over one in three (37%) of the people from our street.
British neighbourhoods are divided on values and sense of community and responsibility:
- More than a third (35%) of us don’t believe that we should have any responsibility for the safety or security of our neighbourhoods
- Nearly half (44%) don’t accept any responsibility for the safety or security of a neighbour’s property
- One in four (25%) of us admit we’d do nothing if we saw someone hanging around our neighbours’ home suspiciously, either out of fear, embarrassment or indifference
- The majority (61%) never socialise with their neighbours, not even occasionally
- Half of us (50%) do not even enjoy “spending time with” our neighbours.
In contrast to the traditional view of neighbourly duties, 42% of us would not trust our neighbours with our homes when we are not there and over one in three, (36%) when we are on holiday. 78% of respondents said they do not share keys with their neighbours.
This has clear implications for home security. Our findings indicate that people feel less responsibility for looking out for suspicious activity in their street, which, along with taking practical security measures, is one of the best ways of discouraging burglars.
I’d love to see this survey run in the United States… similar results to be expected? And then to see it run in Front Porch Forum‘s pilot service region… I’d wager the sense of community and involvement is significantly better. Also from the report…
Social networking online is the most modern form of socialising and getting to know people. Indeed, it seems some of the values of neighbourliness have shifted online. Many of us are now more ‘neighbourly’ with people on social networks than with those in our street: 34% of social networkers are ‘friends’ with or ‘follow’ people they’ve never met before on Facebook or Twitter but fewer than one in five (19%) are online friends with an actual real-world neighbour.
Only 8% have bothered to check if a neighbour is on a social network site.
But online tools are also a powerful and popular way of learning more about and engaging with your neighbourhood.
Quotation posted by Jillian on Front Porch Forum today…
It is easier to be a “humanitarian” than to render your own country its proper due; it is easier to be a “patriot” than to make your community a better place to live in; it is easier to be a “civic leader” than to treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of attention, the harder the task. —Sydney J. Harris
Front Porch Forum is featured on Huffington Post today… http://huff.to/bihtKT
Question for FPF… why do you solicit funds from your subscribers? And, I thought you landed a grant recently.
FPF Response… The four employees of Front Porch Forum provide a free service to 20,000 Vermont households… this takes money. We raise most of those funds through ad sales to local Vermont businesses (thank you sponsors!). Much of the balance comes from voluntary member contributions. Please disregard the request if it’s not a fit for you. Some people get hundreds and even thousands of dollars of value out of FPF and they’re glad to contribute a fraction of that back our way to keep things running smoothly… but we don’t get that income unless we ask. Please consider pitching in!
And, yes, we did recently win a highly competitive Knight News Challenge award. Those funds, once received, will be used as one-time capital to rebuild our software to bring new features to our subscribers and allow us to expand to more communities (our existing software is constrained on these fronts). The Knight award is not intended to cover operating expenses incurred by our ongoing service.
Thanks to those who have asked. I hope FPF proves valuable to all our subscribers. This requires the help of many. Here’s how you can pitch in…
FPF’s mission is to help neighbors connect and build community. THANKS!!
Knight News Challenge award winner Front Porch Forum explained here… http://to.pbs.org/bbmK3o
From Scientific American about a recent meta-study…
… The benefit of friends, family and even colleagues turns out to be just as good for long-term survival as giving up a 15-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. And by the study’s numbers, interpersonal social networks are more crucial to physical health than exercising or beating obesity… The researchers analyzed results from 148 studies—which included a total of 308,849 participants—going back to the early 20th century…
Despite the hyperconnected era of Facebook friends and Blackberry messaging, social isolation is on the rise. More people than not report not having a single person they feel that they can confide in—up threefold from 20 years ago, the report authors noted…
… [regarding] digital social interactions, Holt-Lunstad says, “there are types of things you can get from an online friend, but there are other resources that you cannot.” Although online connections “might be better than nothing,” substituting time in front of a screen is likely not as beneficial as a phone call or face-to-face conversation…
I’d like to see a study along these lines of the health benefits of knowing and communicating with the neighbors.
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more