Yesterday afternoon, I started to panic. Jonah's stomach bus wouldn't quit. After six days of fluids shooting out of both ends, he was very weak. I worried that he was dehydrated or that he had picked up malaria during our vacation to tropical Cape Cod. I took him to the emergency room.
The doctor took blood and urine samples. After an hour, he returned to say that Jonah was fine. He had a super bad stomach virus. And, by the way, he has a heart murmur.
What???? I did a little googling on my iPhone and learned that 30-50% of kids have benign heart murmurs. No big deal. We just need to do a couple of tests to monitor the situation, but it shouldn't affect him at all.
So, I guess I was moderately alarmed at the news, but not all out freaking out. After I talked to my mom and Steve about the situation, I tweeted this information.
Later, I thought about it. Was that really bizarre? I took a snippet of personal information and put it out on the web. I didn't even put it on Facebook, because many of my Facebook friends have my home phone number and I didn't feel like having hour long conversations about it. I wanted to talk about it, but very briefly, so I put it on Twitter.
The New Yorker profiled Jaron Lanier in the July 11th edition. Lanier, who has written a number of popular video games, says that social networking harms real friendships. I know. Not ground-breaking. You know, there is a very low threshhold for technology gurus, aka "visionaries." Honestly, computer programmers should not be giving anyone advice on social interactions with friends and community.
There may be people who have substituted social networking for real friendships, but they are very small in number and were never the sharpest tools in the drawer any way.
Most people aren't confusing social networking with traditional friendships. They use Twitter and Facebook for branding, bursts of communication, a cathartic release, work-style networking. Maybe they use it to reconnect with old friends or for distributing kiddie pictures.
I have almost stopped using Facebook entirely, because I can't write a status that is appropriate for my mother-in-law, the guy who sat next to me in sophomore English class, and my sarcastic neighbor. There are too many worlds colliding on Facebook, so I walk away exhausted. Twitter is simpler, because it's mostly my blog friends. (Hi everyone!) I don't have to filter myself.
While I don't think that anyone has substituted real friends for fake friends on Twitter and Facebook, blogs are a different story. I have developed real friendships with people that I've met through the blogs. I have playdates with their kids. We have drinks. We meet up at conferences. Just got an invitation to a barbecue in Montclair with a friend that I've met through blogging. And, sadly, had to back out of plans for drinks with another blog friend a couple of weeks ago.
Perhaps, blogging is the ultimate social network.
Apt. 11d 
I’ve been online since 1992 and I’ve made the most of the social opportunities online. I’ve been developing a theory about the online world and the different generational responses to social media. I was out Friday night with my friend L whom I met online, and we were listening to my daughter chatter on about the interactions online she’s been having on Webkinz Chat. I won’t let her have a Facebook or a phone to text her friends, but I don’t mind her chatting with perfect strangers. I wonder if that’s a personality thing or a generational response to social media. I don’t really want to talk to my real-life friends/acquaintances online; I want to meet and talk to other interesting people I might not otherwise meet and talk to. When I first went online in ’92, no one else I knew was online. So my experience of it was to seek out people with similar interests (soap operas and politics, if you must know). Later it was parenting, education, and tv shows.
But kids today use social media as just another way to communicate with people they already know. Boooooring. And I suspect that’s not a great thing because the skills they need to build are face-to-face skills. I’ve already learned most of what I need to know about interacting with people because I am old, but kids need a wider variety of experiences.
I still can’t decide if it’s a good idea that my daughter spends her allotted daily computer time as a Webkinz crab talking to other anonymous Webkinz icons in a chat room. I may be raising another anti-social geek, or I may be protecting her from the difficult social environment of a middle schooler. Who knows?
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Lanier might be right. Many of my friends (not acquaintances) seem to have opted for one-way posts instead of interaction. They want to talk AT me, not TO me. They want to announce something and are not interested in anything I might have to contribute to the subject.
I’ve taken myself off of Facebook because it is demoralizing to see friends repeatedly post about their lives without responding to my messages or, worse, to any of the follow-up quick queries I’ve sent expressing empathy, curiosity, congratulations, etc. to the news announced in their posts. It may speak to the poverty of my social circle, but I have found social networking to have greatly diminished the quality of my exchanges with friends I’ve known for many years.
Does anyone remember the 90s?! For the young readers: We used to have phone conversations, back in the day, during which both parties exchanged information. If you didn’t have time to talk, you let the answering machine pick up or simply said “I’ve only got about 5 minutes…” The beauty of the phone call was that often additional information/news was relayed that went beyond the phone call’s original purpose, making for a richer exchange.
I think both blogs and social networking can be a force for good, but I think the genres of status updates and tweets can increase narcissism and are generally deleterious for one of the key elements of good manners: reciprocity.
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Like you, I don’t put anything on FB that I’m not willing to discuss with people in real life. Twitter is just a quick little yelp sometimes to get something off your chest to the anonymous out there. When my dad had a heart attack, I called my three best friends and put it on twitter. Just a way to get the “he’ll be fines” without panicking those who know him. When I knew he was fine, put it on FB (2 days later).
I’m not really “friends” with anyone from the internet unless I’ve met them through blogging though. 140 characters doesn’t build relationships. It’s more like saying “hi” in the hall in high school to everyone you passed.
I do think in some ways it has hurt my real life friendships. I don’t necessarily pick up the phone to vent or share minor things that happen. I may update FB and figure everyone knows. I most certainly don’t feel like blogging much anymore, and part of that has to do with posting on Twitter and FB.
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I don’t like giving any personal information on any social networks. Companies will pay millions for it and this is why Facebook (which doesn’t really sell anything) is a billion dollar company
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Question: Do you ever notice any major gaps between the electronic self-presentation of people you know well and their actual selves?
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Sigh. I hear you. I’m becoming more annoyed by the day with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and now, Google+. As invitations keep pouring in from Google+, I keep thinking, why did this person invite me? Do I even know them? Facebook, who’s stream includes for me mostly the people in high school I didn’t like, has become a reenactment of all that I hated about high school. A group of women who were exclusionary as girls post photos of their exclusionary trips. Look at us! We’re still friends! And look! We didn’t invite the rest of the 200 people to whom we’ve posted these photos.
Like Christiana, I’ve had the same experience of commenting on someone’s post only to have it ignored. It’s happened on both Twitter and Facebook. I used to use Twitter as a place to take a quick reading of what people thought about something, but now when I throw something out, no one responds. And it’s not for lack of followers–I have nearly 1000. But I think everyone I follow follows 1000 people and have 1000 people following them. They can’t keep up.
I like the blog for the ability to extend my thoughts and get responses–even if there are just a few. I feel meh about other social networking. And, Tom is right–all those companies are monetizing our personal data. Laura, you should check the ads on the web sites you visit carefully. Ten bucks says you now get info about heart murmurs. I’m thinking I’ll be exiting social networks soon. For now, I’m mostly neglecting them.
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Ditto what Laura (GeekyMom) said.
Also, 99% percent of my status updates on Facebook are my automatic links to my blog or links to articles I find interesting on the internet. If I don’t blog about it, I don’t tell you about it. The only thing I use Twitter for my automatic tweets of blog posts. I otherwise don’t tweet at all. I don’t know if I ever will.
I agree with you, Laura (11D)–about blogs and friendships. I’ve met some incredible people through blogging. They sure feel like real friendships to me.
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I continue to be fascinated by trends and mores and how people use and understand web stuff.
I started around the same time as Wendy (1991 for me, on a game (MUSH) which was unusual for me, and UseNet).
I am still getting used to – despite making my living on the web – the idea of using my full real name on Facebook and my more public blog. For a long time, although “online friends” became “real friends” the reverse was never true,
I rarely tweet and I seem to use FB for medical updates more than anything, which depresses me a bit but like you Laura I can’t seem to write an update that will fit for my collective networks.
That said, I met my husband of 17 years online, my early adoption is what led to my job now, and I have several really good friendships – a couple have stayed online, but are past 15 years, and the rest have become err…normalized? Into real life.
But going the other way I find more stressful. I don’t really want to discuss my political views with my homophobic relatives, etc. etc. etc. I am perfectly happy at a picnic to just discuss our kids and the movies we like and not get into it, but FB and Twitter and even a blog just rolls it all together.
Christiana and Lblanken I am probably just like a lot of your offenders. I post, I respond for a bit, and then I get overwhelmed or move on. I feel…silly or repetitive, answering every like or comment the same way. And I do fade in and out of social media; some people seem to have it on all the time but I don’t except for work.
I don’t feel at all bothered if people don’t respond back to me after I’ve liked or commented on something they’ve said on FB unless it’s a question. My assumption is someone has to end the conversation.
But having read your posts I’ll try to do better. But it is hard to keep up even just on comments sometimes (and I don’t even post that much) nevermind everyone’s feeds. It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the comments, it’s more a question of not wasting their time.
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I don’t do FB myself. I know I’m missing out on some good stuff, but on the whole it seems kind of creepy and fake.
One interesting aspect I’ve seen in talking with family who use FB to keep up with people is that it keeps distant black sheep much more on your radar than used to be the case. Even without my trying to keep up with the black sheep’s doings, I’m bound to hear from somebody else in the family who does. On the one hand, FB keeps family members within closer orbit (even under circumstances that might previously have led to life-long alienation), on the other hand, it also serves to provide continuing evidence as to certain people’s immaturity and jerkiness. (A cousin’s ex-wife has been having a TV-worthy mid-life crisis, which has apparently been well-documented on her FB page.)
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jenn–I do think some of those people are overwhelmed and that I understand. i am too and I don’t expect responses from everyone but clearly there’s a group of folks for whom these tools are another way to grandstand.
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Amy, I don’t know. I think a lot of people are very much like their online personas. I’m nicer in person, but I’m pretty much the same personality-wise.
I am not much of a replier/commenter in general. Maybe it’s some kind of quasi-autism in me, but I don’t see the point of replying just for the sake of it. Like Jenn said, a conversation has to end at some point, and usually, I let the other person have the last word. 🙂
On the other hand, I do post political stuff on FB and also challenge people who repost crap right-wing memes. Right now I’m on a one-woman mission to inform all my Fox News-loving family and friends about the Murdoch hacking scandal because I don’t trust Fox to tell them about it.
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“I have developed real friendships with people that I’ve met through the blogs.”
Surely Ann Althouse has retired the prize in this category for all time.
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There’s probably somebody who has married and divorced several people they meet through a blog.
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OK, I have to go read the conversations in the comment section, particularly from Laura (whom I’ve actually met in person years ago because of our blogs), but wanted to comment first.
I could have totally written this post because I feel 100% the same way!! I’ve made lots of wonderful friends through blogging, people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. And the funnest thing is meeting in person and just continuing our interactions, now “live.” Twitter is not that bad, you’re right, but facebook — BLAH — it’s beyond annoying!
OK, on to read the comments.
P.S. I just wish that more of my “real life” friends read my blog. 😦
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“but facebook — BLAH — it’s beyond annoying!”
What’s objectionable about FB? Is it the unrelenting “OMG–my life is so amazing!!!!!!” updates?
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I think so much of this falls under the old phrase YMMV. I didn’t get into FB until after I moved outside the US. I use it heavily to keep up with friends, but I refuse to friend my mother or most other “elder” family members. FB, for me, is a place for friends (or family members that are my age).
I don’t mind vapid or worthless status updates, since I so rarely see these people. Any contact or impression of a friend’s life is better than nothing. I haven’t seen a cousin in five years, but I enjoy knowing that her family enjoyed their holiday to the beach.
I also believe that FB has improved its privacy features, so you could group your Friends into various categories and only allow certain groups to see a particular status update. I think it that was better understood, it would eliminate some of the issues Laura mentioned in her post.
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I started writing an essay about cyber rudeness a few years ago. Maybe I should come back to it.
I was raising as a good Catholic girl who is always nice and turns the other cheek and is always friendly and shit. Some of that niceness stuff I’ve been able to drop, because it is really impossible to be that nice all the time. But much of the niceness stuck, too. So, it really bothers me that I can’t always respond to e-mails, comments on FB and Twitter, and even comments on the blog. I just don’t have enough time. I intend to write nice notes back to every email that I receive, but I can’t. There’s not enough time in the day. So, all this social media, plus the blog, plus all the real activities that I participate in, plus household management, means that I am occasionally less nice than I would like to be.
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