Do you remember those young (~12) girls in Australia who got lost in the sewers and their first thought was contact their Facebook friends via their cell phones?

It's happened again, with older girls and worse results.

Three college girls drove into a pond at night and they had a couple of minutes to survive, so naturally they called for help on their cell phones.

Cops: N.D. Students Likely Didn't See Pond:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/04/national/main5524852.shtml

Everything I want to say about this would be deleted by the moderators anyway, so I won't say them.

Sue

We have, as a society, traded convenience for security and preparedness. It's easier to call AAA then change our own tire. It's easier to ask for food and supply's than stockpile 72hrs of my own. "Someone else will know how to get there I don't need a map" or "Someone else will have the experience necessary for all of us in the group, I'll just show up unprepared."

By extension with younger people, it's more convenient to talk by text than face to face. Instead of being involved in action, let me twitter my feelings.

In this situation, it was one of their best ideas to call for help than help themselves. Even if helping themselves was being aware of their surroundings.

Its horrible what happened, perhaps very preventable. Stay Alert, Stay Alive.

I think the story is lacking details, more to be filled in with autopsy. Possible reason they didn't call 911 too.

Either way opening a door or breaking a window is hard w/out proper tools, especially if water is even 1/2 way up.

Sounds like they panicked, called their friends, and then probably kept trying to get out and drowned.

Tragic. My condolences to the families.

If they called their friends, instead of 911, they might not have realized how serious their situation was? Maybe they thought they were in a swamp, rather than a lake...and as accurate as the news is, maybe they were in a swamp.

I've been following this story for a day or so, but wasn't sure how I was going to post it.

One of the young ladies was a Canadian, so it got more media play up here.

The reports I've seen (preliminary) suggest they drove into a dugout. Farmers and ranchers dig these (with monster trackhoes or Cats) to stockpile water. If it wasn't intended for direct access by cattle, all the sides would be very steep; and if the material was removed for construction (a "borrow pit") you could be on top of it with almost no warning. If, if, if. I know there is one borrow pit on my father's farm that would swallow a full-sized 4x4 extended cab pickup truck and you'd never know it was in there except for the oil slick. Which is how they found the Jeep.

I know that 20-somethings seem to reach for their phones almost as a conditioned response. One can forgive them for making such an error in this circumstance; they certainly paid dearly.

Really, though, I think the story belongs with the "surviving car sinking" thread. The trick seems to be having some pre-thought-out responses to life-threatening situations. At 20, you're still working those out.

They might not have had time to call 911 anyway, and external rescue was out of the question...

I think water blocks cell phone signals. If they had the phone in hand and pressed a speed-dial button it might have started a call before the car sank below the water, when the call would fail. And that's more or less what the news article says - a call was received but quickly failed.

OK, let me tell you why the first Facebook post situation was NOT dumb.

If you're on a cell phone with a very low signal - 1 bar - that means your phone can get a control channel, but it might not be able to make a voice call. But if it can get a control channel, it can send a text message.
If it can send a text message, you can't reach 9-1-1 via text.
So, using logic, you would send a text message to the largest possible audience - in the case of many people, that's their Facebook "Friends".

So, given that we don't know if they could make a call - and I'm guessing they could not connect via voice call, they did the correct thing and used the communications tools they had, in a manner that - I might note- SUCCESSFULLY solved their problem.

Wrong. In fact, the opposite is the case. What you see as being "disconnected" from the action because of the Twittering and Texting is quite the opposite - you're just not a participant, so you don't see it.

I spend a LOT of time studying how society and technology intersect and how each generation now experiences multiple techno-social disconnects in addition to the normal "you just don't get it" of teen/adult communications.

In the case of the obsessive texting (3,000 to 4,000 messages a MONTH is quite typical for a 15 year old female), what is happening is there is an extension of the social circle facilitated by short messages that creates what we call an "ambient awareness" of the current activities, emotions and opinions of a social group. What is most interesting about this is that the distinction you and I make between "here and present" and "virtual and not present" is not the same for this group.

One of my favorite examples of this phenomena is a recent case I studied in which we asked a group of teens about a recent movie. We asked them what they thought of the film, and they gave us a range of answers. We then asked where they saw the film, and this is where I realized I was in new territory.

Of the group of 12 teens, all of whom had been telling us what they thought of the film, only 9 had actually been in the theater - 3 of them were unable to go, but they got a near real-time update of the film from the folks who were in the theater.

But that's not the interesting part - the interesting part is when we asked each of them "Who went to the film with you?" and NONE of the girls who were not present were excluded from the names they gave us! To them, their 3 friends who were not physically there were still a part of the group! This is a fairly major change in societal organization and communications - the idea that your "clan" and communications circle is beyond the limits of physical presence and untethered to a location, yet present enough to qualify as concurrently experiencing an event.

In many ways, this is a bigger change in society than the motor vehicle or electricity, because it is changing how we think about presence and place - and it is changing how we communicate. We're getting more visual and less verbal, we're becoming more parallel - we're bad at multi-tasking now, but some people are very, very good at it.

So, to pull this back to the OP topic - the women may not have thought to do anything but call 9-1-1 but you don't know that they had an alternative. In their situation, panic could have set in, the doors may have been forced shut, they may not have thought they were were in immediate danger - we can't - and will never - know.

This is an excellent point, Martin.