Is Facebook isolating its users socially? Or does the popular social networking website actually enhance social interaction?
Those are the questions that Lisa Selin Davis of TIME magazine is asking:
Jenny has not returned my calls in roughly a year. She has, however, sent me a poinsettia, poked me, and placed a gift beneath my Christmas tree. She's done all this virtually, courtesy of Facebook.com, the online social networking site where users create profiles, gather "friends," and join common interest groups, not to mention send digital gifts.
Though Jenny has three children, ages 4 to 14, and rarely finds time for visits, phone calls or even e-mail, the full-time mom in upstate New York regularly updates her status on Facebook ("Jenny is fixing a birthday dinner," "Jenny took the kids sledding") and uploads photos (her son in the school play).
After 24 years, our friendship is now filtered through Facebook, relegated to the online world. Call it Facebook Recluse Syndrome, and Jenny is far from the site's only social hermit.
I don't use facebook so I have to maintain my social hermitude the old fashioned way! Link
There are people from high school that I'd never think about, call, or talk to again were it not for Facebook.
(It's also a good way for me to put together meetups for myself and my dear friends from high school, now in college, and let everyone know the details at once).
But the biggest thing for me is keeping the connections I could not have in the real workd. The sister I have not seen in years, who I now "see" regularly. The best friend from college i thought was dead and now talks to me at least once a week for hours.
All those dumbass applications that Evilbeagle mentioned for one. I tell my actual Friends outright, I have no intention of accepting flair, virtual drinks or playing a rousing game of whatever the hell they want. It's just stupid.
Second, long-lost real friends I either approach or have requests from to add me, and then they never even communicate. I'm still debating if it's proper etiquette to un-friend them. I don't want to be just another notch in their FB headboard.
I am spending less and less time on FB when I see how my girlfriend for example, spends as much time as possible forming empty relationships with assorted nutters.
As humans we seem to enslave ourselves and have no problem with turning ourselves into another market to plunder.
Anyway, with Neatorama I don't have time anymore ;D