The appearance of a social life....

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, etc. are sites that give the illusion of a society that is increasing in its social awareness but is in fact doing the exact opposite. I made a Facebook account during my senior year in high school because a Facebook account was necessary in order to play "senior assassin" (a senior bonding game.) I kept the account for the rest of that year and all the way through my freshman year in college. I deleted it upon my return home for summer vacation. My reason for its deletion was simple; freedom. Facebook is an obsessive site that causes people to continuously check up on their friends and what their friends are saying about them. In some ways, Facebook gives people a continuous social gratification. The catch is that this gratification is false. Facebook provides you with a visible number of friends that you have, pictures there are of you, a profile singing your praises, and a wall full of comments by friends. Your entire social life is visible on one screen. And it takes no time at all to compare the "numbers" that define your social life with those of some one else who may have more pictures, more friends, more wall posts, or more applications than you. 

In the Clive Thompson article, he mentions how people maintain a connection with "weak-ties." People essentially stalk people that they are only somewhat social with. They watch the details of these people's lives from afar and then somehow feel as though they know the person. After deleting my Facebook account people asked me how I would maintain my connection with these "weaker-ties." And it wasn't a question of how so much as it was a question of want. I couldn't really care less about my connection with these people. They had absolutely no influence on the decisions I would make, they weren't my support system in the way my close friends and family are. By deleting my Facebook account, my relationship with family and friends became even closer because I had to actively pursue seeing them in person and having a real connection with them instead of just watching they're status updates on my computer screen. I am a firm believer in the old school ways of social connection. Instead of writing on a friend's wall, "Hey! What's up? I haven't talked to you in forever. How have you been?" I instead ask them out to lunch and in return create a connection with a real person instead of a digital read out. 

I don't like to force people into my own beliefs but I truly believe that everyone should at least try and step away from Facebook and other social networking sites for a few weeks and see how the quality of their life increases.