Are Social Networks Truly Social?

3rd August 2009 • 0 Comments

I stumbled upon this article  the BBC News website yesterday where the leader of the Catholic Church in Wales & England, criticised Facebook for damaging community live. At first I was a bit skeptical but after reading the article I'm starting to think he might have a good point. I will tell you now I am no psychologist and this is just my own personal opinion.

The main point of the article is his fear over the fact that people are developing weak friendships over the internet, instead of earning them through face to face communication. Now if we look at my own Facebook friends list, I have 199 friends (who is going to be the 200th ;-) ). Do I have face to face contact with all 199 of these people on a regular basis? No of course I don't, otherwise I'd be one of the most popular people of all time. As with a lot of Facebook users, some of these people on my friends list I haven't seen in years and some are just there because we were in the same year at High School.

The main danger with this, is dedicating too much time to communicating via Facebook, Twitter, MSN or Myspace etc, rather than going out with friends to the cinema etc and developing a close relationship with your friends around you. Socialising face to face will always be the best way, as it teaches you about that person and how they react to different circumstances. This knowledge can be used in future and hopefully helps you become a polite individual in the future. Part of this experience is learning body language, something in which the archbishop states that people aren't learning. This is important as interpreting something someone says involves looking at their body language and the tone of their voice, this is something that can never be truly represented by the text communication of social networks. 

For example if I was to tell my friend he smelled but with a cheeky grin on my face, they'd hopefully realise I was joking. If I messaged them saying "You Smell", they may take that as an insult. For someone who may have spent too much time on social networks, they may not notice the cheeky grin and take the face to face communication as an insult, which in turn could make them appear to have a very aggressive personality. 

The main danger of communicating through technology is that you can be very anonymous whilst your actions can be very public. If communicating with strangers you can safely insult them and not face any repercussions due to the fact you can hide behind your username. Same with someone you know, you can insult them from a distance. As you don't see the reaction you will probably not feel any guilt for this reaction even though you might have really upset someone. In terms of actions being public, this can be simple as not inviting someone to you party. In a face to face context you might be able to get away with not inviting someone, but on social networks there will always be a record that you did not invite this person and everyone will be able to see that. If this person can see that others have been invited this could possibly hurt their feeling and cause an uproar when there wouldn't have been before.

It can also be a simple thing as deleting someone from your friends list, it is a direct and public message saying you do not like them anymore and this could cause a scandal when phasing someone out might not have.

Now this is where I agree with the Archbishop but there are some elements which I disagree upon. I feel that social networks are a great way of keeping in touch with friends who may have moved away or whom you don't see day to day. An example of this, is that I managed to get in touch with my childhood friend who moved to Canada many years ago. Whilst I could have done this by writing him a letter or visiting him, it involves knowledge of where he lives and also being in contact in the first place, a social network means I can talk to him minutes after pressing the add button after a search. 

Recently I also met up with some people I used to work with. We all went our separate ways three years ago due to University, however we still keep some form of contact going. I believe without Facebook etc. this level of contact would be much lower and I don't believe this meet up would have happened if we relied on communication through phone and email. I understand that reunions have happened for decades before social networks, but the thing is numbers & addresses change, if you don't keep in constant contact you'll lose this information. The majority of the time a name doesn't change and thus is easily findable on social networks and a quick message saying "How are you" is very easy to do.

Outside your friendship group it is also an excellent way to talk with people whom have similar interests to you. If I want to talk about the latest game I can find a group of people equally willing to talk about this game at just the touch of a button.

So whilst social networks do have their benefits of communicating with long lost friends and fellow enthusiasts you have to maintain a level of control, I think. If you develop too many friendships exclusively through technology it can be very dangerous, as all the other person has to do is stop communicating with you and if you've invested heavily into this, then you could get very upset and have no friend on call who can come round to comfort you.

So use it carefully guys, remember you have a great set of friends around you and you have to earn this friendship by spending time with them, not just messaging them on Facebook.