Posted by Landan.
Mar
1
Posted by Landan.
On Facebook and Social Networking in General
Over winter break I deleted my facebook. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. There’s been a lot of articles lately about social networking and the affects it has on society and the individual. For the most part these aren’t very positive changes.
I’m an introverted sort of guy. The internet has become sort of a crutch for me. It provides a back door for expressing myself. Before World of Warcraft became extremely popular, there was a game called Star Wars Galaxies. For about 2 years I played this game. I spent hours everyday interacting with people half-way across the world who I’d never met in real life. Thankfully I got more involved in Band and the film program at my school and made some really good friends. I hung out with them. We had poker nights on fridays. I’d go over play a game of poker or watch one. Then we’d pop in a movie and talk throughout it. I usually didn’t get home until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.
I’ve felt a lot more social anxiety here at school. It’s tough for me to get close to people. I made some good friends here, but a lot of people I just talked to on facebook. It’s not really a healthy way to form a relationship at all. Most of our communication is nonverbal. If I’m talking to someone through a computer, there’s a significant loss of communication going on.
The idea that extensive use of the internet for social interactions can actually rewire our brains is a little disturbing to me. I’m trying to get myself more away from that. Yes I have a blog here online, but that’s more akin to writing an editorial column for a newspaper. What you see on here is something that is filtered and meant to inspire thought in my readers rather than convey my innermost thoughts (that’s why I have a personal journal).
There are 4 comments to this post.
Lydia Carlton had this to say,
Mar 2, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Too true. There have been plenty of people from this campus that want to be my friend on facebook, but I never have real life conversations w/ them. (I’m all about face-to-face conversations!) 
I know many people that do use Facebook to keep in touch (I do as well,) but there are WAY too many people who waste so much time on it stalking people, and spending hours searching for that ’special’ bumper sticker to send to a friend. I really do think people need to get out a lil more….
End of my rant. lol
By the way, do you always observe Lent?
jkcrosslin had this to say,
Mar 2, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
Hah, no. I tried it last year and utterly failed. My roommate gave up facebook last year and had a pretty positive experience with that.
This year was sort of a fluke. I was talking to some friends and it got mentioned, so I decided to try it this year.
Roomate mentioned in previous note had this to say,
Mar 2, 2009 @ 10:39 pm
Yeah giving up facebook was great idea, gave me extra time on my day. It also makes me more willing to seek people put to talk to, which will always be a more entertaining conversation than one you will have on facebook. (too easy to ignore or put half a thought into any online conversation)
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For me FB is just a way to stay in touch with people that I may not see very often. I have even played games with people online from RE that I had not even talked to before FB. Guess everyone has to do what works for them. But I know for me, since my mobility has now been limited, it is a way for me to stay connected. I also love finding people from my past that I had lost contact with and would not have had another way to reconnect. I actually have a lot more problems with text messaging. I would just rather pick up the phone and talk.