"Children and teenagers aged 18 years and under will be able to create a ‘friends bubble’ to allow home visits provided the adults in their homes are fully vaccinated, under an easing of restrictions for school holidays.
From 12 noon today, 21 September, people aged 18 years and under who live in stay-at-home areas and areas of concern across NSW will be able to create a bubble of three friends and visit each other’s homes for play and activity, subject to the following conditions:
Each child is allowed to have two designated friends come to their house. These two friends must always be the same, creating a three-person “friends bubble”"
- NSW Health, 21st Sep 2021.
One of the often cited aphorisms but rarely ever defined, is the so called "Law Of Unintended Consequences". This Law with its many exceptions, exemptions, and exasperations, goes on to broadly state that the actions of people, which includes people who are corporate and corporate sole (such as companies or governments) have actions and consequences which are either unintended or perhaps unanticipated; either through the perverse motives of people, or simply because the action itself was obnoxious or daft.
Perhaps the most famous example of this, is the almost certainly fictional story of the British Raj, which was concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offering a bounty for every dead cobra which was caught. The story supposedly goes that the program was initially successful but that particularly savvy entrepreneurial types, started breeding cobras in order to collect the bounty money.
I can not find evidence of this actually being real in British India but as you might expect, it is currently a hobby of everyone's favourite low level superhero, Florida Man:
https://www.sfwmd.gov/our-work/python-program
Python removal agents will be paid:
An hourly rate ($8.65 per hour or $15.00 per hour depending on the area) for up to ten (10) hours each day while actively searching for pythons on designated lands.
An additional incentive payment of $50.00 for each python measuring up to four (4) feet plus an extra $25.00 for each foot measured above four (4) feet.
- South Florida Water Management District , as at 24th Sep 2021.
As if that's not going to result in python breeders.
The Law Of Unintended Consequences is one of those things which economists have known about for a very long time but which seemingly gets ignored by politicians and social scientists who perhaps mean well but want to achieve things in a hurry (Pink Batts, Building the Education Revolution (school halls), JobKeeper, Robodebt etc.) It is the Law Of Unintended Consequences which is the reason why if social engineers were to build bridges (as opposed to structural engineers) then you would be well advised not to cross them.
What if anything does this have to do with the NSW Government's new "friends bubble" policy for children? As with any law or regulation, there will be consequences as the result of its enactment. Also, as someone who lives in the land of pulling apart law and regulations, I like to see what those consequences are and game them out.
Let's look at the crux of the regulation:
"Each child is allowed to have two designated friends come to their house. These two friends must always be the same, creating a three-person “friends bubble”;"
This sounds all good in theory, however people are complex social beings who occupy places inside complex social networks.
I was very much introduced to this in Year 6 when my teacher was quite concerned that our class had become quite cliquey. Her solution was to draw up a sociogram and map the friendship web of the class. The plan after drawing up this sociogram was to then assign seating positions in the class, based upon whom people had the fewest connections. She did this by asking one simple question:
"Who do you most want to sit next to in class?"
A connection is drawn between two people if they both name each other. Since this is a self reporting system, then it is quite accurate. By getting the class to write down three names, she was able to determine pretty quickly that there were in fact three distinct groups of about 8 people each, in a class of 31.
3 x 8 = 24
See the problem? In our Year 6 class, with a self reporting system, you got three distinct groups and 7 people who left over.
For the purposes of splitting people up, then that isn't a problem but if you are talking about government sanctioned friendship groups for the purposes of social interaction, then the Law Of Unintended Consequences has very much made itself known.
If each child is allowed two friends, then that creates little triplets... like so:
Alice chooses Belinda and Chloe.
Belinda chooses Alice and Chloe.
Chloe chooses Alice and Belinda.
Nobody chooses Danielle.
Danielle might be everyone's third choice in which case she missed out, or perhaps nobody's choice at all.
The big problem here is that I can game this out because I have gone beyond the point in life where my internal biological processes have deemed me necessary. I am perfectly happy to play mind games like this, because as someone whose head has been spray painted in grey experience, this kind of problem doesn't immediately concern me.
However, if you are a kid, or worse a teenager who is living through this, you are probably feeling things with the feelings volume turned up to 11; with bursting as the feelings constantly ram up against the top of the VU monitors.
I can imagine that for a kid trying to understand and manage this current time of mass social isolation, it's probably already terrible. There must be some kind of perverse comfort in knowing that everyone else is isolated as well. I also imagine that it would be quite another thing to know that your friends are out there in their three-person “friends bubble” and having a nice time socialising while you have been left alone. What's even worse, is that they chose not to have you there; either because you're only friend No.4 or because you're even further down the social order.
I can imagine that there are kids who won't be named in these three person friend bubbles and will be fine with it. Someone like Nigel No-Friends and Scott Nobody have probably already started their own personal journey of developing resilience as a character trait. If you already aren't very many people's friend, then you've probably already either developed coping mechanisms or genuinely don't mind being on your own. Then again, some people just have a natural disposition to enjoying solitude and this whole time of social distancing is in fact quite lovely for them.
There's definitely a sense of irony in this brave new world where Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Tiktok, Parler, Zoom, Skype, and a multitude of other social networking media platforms have made everyone more connected but at the same time leave us poking at the world through a telephone touch.
If anything, this three person friend bubble policy might actually exacerbate some kid's fears of missing out; especially when they can see and know that others are having more fun, living better lives, or experiencing better things than they are; through choice not to have you there.
Alice, Belinda and Chloe will be fine. Danielle might be devastated. Nigel and Scott are probably okay.
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