The Facebook Promise: Cool Or Just Cold
Do you Facebook? Why do you Facebook? How many friends do you have? How many Facebook friends do you have? Is there a difference? Should there be a difference?
We could have quite a conversation on these four questions, if only we could actually converse. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and all the other "social networking" sites might be signs that we aren't talking much anymore, or, worse yet, could be contributing factors to the absence of meaningful communication.
Since blogging doesn't let us have a real conversation, let's tackle this as best we can, and you can respond with your thoughts and perspectives via the comments section which follows.
The good news about "comments" is that you can, well, comment. The bad news is that the blog-comment-respond process tends to move us more toward statements and away from inquiry and genuine interchange. For example, if we were in an actual conversation right now, you could ask a simple question: "what's the difference? What do you mean?" And I could respond, and we could wind up following any number of threads, playing off each other, going deeper into the underlying substance and meaning of our interaction.
However, we aren't in conversation. We may not even be in communication (more on that difference in a bit).
So that leaves me with writing something, trying to make a point or establish a line of thought by a series of statements. You get to respond via comments, and comments tend to be the same thing in reverse - since you can't converse, you are likely to write something back ranging from agreement to disagreement, typically in the form of statements about your point of view.
And so we exchange points of view, arguments, agreements or disagreements, never really knowing if either of us has truly understood or connected with the other. Sure, we have the kind of connection indicated by responses exchanged, but we never really know how well or how deeply we are connecting with one another.
So where am I going with this and what does it have to do with Facebook or social networking? Glad I asked!
Facebook, according to the Facebook corporate page, "is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections."
So, Facebook helps people communicate (more efficiently) and share information through real world social connections. Hmmmm. Let's look at those two distinctions.
Does Facebook really help you communicate at all, much less more efficiently? That depends on what you mean by communication.
One definition of communication has to do with the exchange of messages or information. Facebook is pretty good at that. You can post anything from what you are doing now, to what books you have been reading, to where you are going to dinner tonight. All simple messages to be sure, some more informative than others. You can join a group or invite others to join yours and blast each other with announcements or pleas for help. You can put up little notes on someone's wall and you can send them virtual hugs and and and.
Another definition of communication suggests greater depth, having to do with establishing a meaningful interaction with another, leading to greater understanding and increased intimacy. How does Facebook fare on this definition? Depends on what you mean by understanding and intimacy. I'll come back to understanding and intimacy later, along with a deeper exploration of what communication means.
Then there's the part about Facebook facilitating the exchange of information through the "social graph" and "digital mapping" of "real world social connections." Now doesn't that just warm the cockles of your real world heart?
If you are an engineer, social graphs and digital maps probably seem very cool, somewhat akin to a pathway to cyber-nirvana. Graphing and mapping relationships and connections is so much less messy than actual human to human interaction. Part of me can really appreciate this piece of the puzzle. Human interaction can be quite messy.
However, this is a key part of the Facebook promise that if not understood could lead you away from "cool" and over toward "cold."
To the extent that you are using Facebook to create networks (another one for the engineers amongst us), then it's pretty cool. That assumes by network you mean something that builds connections between people who share interests and information (books, movies, cool I-Phone applets, etc) or creates introductions to others who might have information, resources or references that you might need (getting that virus off the computer or helping you find a job).
Most of us like the idea of getting references from friends when trying to find anything from a good tech to a reliable plumber. Facebook can do this pretty well.
However, what's up with this notion of "friends?" Is a friend simply someone in a "social graph" or "digital map," someone who might be able to refer you to a good techie or plumber? Or is a friend someone with whom you can develop deeper levels of communication, intimacy and understanding?
Do intimacy and understanding even matter?
As you can readily tell, I'm setting the table here for a deeper discussion about what connection and communication mean. What does it mean to have a friend? How are real world friends and connections different from cyber world friends and connections? How can we bridge the two? How can social networking help build the kind of intimacy, communication and understanding that sits underneath the frenetic pace that seems to characterize life in the early 21st century?
Or does this even matter?
I'd love to hear from you either via the comments section which follows or via email. If you have thoughts, questions or suggestions, please let me know. Of course, you can always post something on my wall or we could even create a Facebook group about building intimacy and connection using Facebook.
You can find out more about Russell Bishop at http://www.lessonsinthekeyoflife.com. Contact Russell at: russell@lessonsinthekeyoflife.com
The author of Lessons in the Key of Life, Russell is an Educational Psychologist, professional life coach and management consultant, based in Santa Barbara California.
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I agree that Facebook and Twitter can be an artificial sense of friends. I love really being present with someone either by phone or in person. That way I am able to ask questions in the middle of someone else’s thought. Doing that can take us on an entirely different train of thought; then we are actually conversing not just monologue-ing. When using Facebook or Twitter, my hope is that if we see we have more between us, we can then talk on the phone and create a different level of intimacy. My experience with Twitter, especially, has been one of making good connections and learning to pithy in my speech. But many kinds of internet connections warrant phone friends or coffee friends or dare we say a full dinner with someone.
Here’s to creating deeper intimacy,
Dr. Jennifer Howard
http://www.DrJenniferHoward.com
I asked myself these questions and after about five seconds I came to the conclusion that referring to a list of peoples' profiles as 'friends' does not imply that they are Friends, just a friendly way to refer to a list of peoples' profiles.
As for communication, with many things on the internet, it is physically solitary, and I think is a facilitator of communication much like a bulletin board.
What you get from facrebook depends on how you use it -- and how the people you know use it. I've gotten to know people better because of facebook. I can honestly say I've made a new real friend that I would not have.
If you post about your life and your interests, if you comment on what other people post, if you ask questions, answer, stay engaged -- you make connections and build relationships.
If you only use facebook to post updates about what you did yesterday, and that's all -- then that's all it will be.
Email seems to have another purpose- tho in some ways similar. Email for me is more electronic letter writing. There's a lot more emotion and passion that can come though in an email as well as quotes from newspapers and magazines that make a point. My private email address is for my friends and my family.
A blog is again different in that its content depends on what you determine you want to achieve by keeping it. Mine is a personal private blog, only for family and friends. It includes travel commentaries and stories about my husband and I. For me it's an electronic stream of consciousness and probably my most narcissistic of all the communications. My friends and family can take it or leave it. (Overall tho it's cheaper than the phone! and even if you have skype, you don't have to repeat the same thngs over and over again!)
I probably over-answered, but you made me think how my overall communication style has changed over the years - I think technology allows us as much freedom to communicate as we want to so use. I don't believe that facebook is responsible for our lack of communication skills. Our culture family and society have weighed in on that. I suppose awful things can happen on facebook, but they have happened for years anyway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//Kitty_Genovese]. Though technology changes, we humans remain very much the same.
I'm one of those 'middle aged+' people who late discovered facebook and, as I live in Europe, I use it mostly to keep in touch with my children and grandchildren in the US, as well as some old 'just found again' friends from 30 years ago. I also have some friends of my sons who are now scattered around the world and they keep in touch as well--- but lightly. The things posted on the public Wall are generalities and links and recipes or twitter-ish one liners, as well as the odd score on bejeweled or "the five worst/best..." basically the small talk of the internet.
I've thought about electronic communication, and how it's used (my granddaughter has 1000 friends on facebook, and they all seem to be in her photo albums at college parties!) there are no deep personal exchanges that go on publicly - tho I have had the odd "CALL ME" from one or the other of my grandchildren, and sometimes I will catch them or a friend on the 'chat' function.
Mostly there is the more private email exchanges that take place confirming a possible visit (from one of my son's friends) or an update on life and times, from people I really thought I'd lost when life's circumstances changed. Facebook is a fun way to identify yourself to the world, and keep in touch with who you want. It's my public email address that's posted. Not my private one.
Facebook is a hodgepodge for me. I have very few of my real friends on there. A few acquaintances. Here and there we might post something. Then some people I hardly know friended me because they are trying to promote their career in entertainment. A well known radio personality (not a neocon) friended... me I did not know why. I think he thought I was someone else. I figured why not? He ended up defriending me a while later (?). I dont take it too seriously. I dont use it as a political forum. Huffpost is much better for that. It is good for posting photos and videos and brief comments. I think people who are a lot younger than me probably use it differently.
>YAWN<
there have been so many articles written on this topic by now that say so little.
facebook is a technology. yes it will change how we do things. no, probably not very much. yes, some for the better. and some for the worse.
but it's really no printing press, people.
Facebook seems to me to be perfectly honest in it's title - Facebook. It is all on the surface, even if somebody is willing to bare their soul on their facebook page, it still would seem phony. You don't develop deep relationships on Facebook. It is merely a tool, like the telephone, or email and the quality of the relationship depends on what was already there. I actually think it is a rather crude communication tool and it holds the risk of turning human interactions into a video game.
I agree that it tends lend itself to one-sided conversations. Everyone can talk, but is anyone really listening? (or do they even care what you ate for breakfast?)
See Deborah Jiang Stein's Profile
Russell, I've asked myself these same questions. I've been challenged with the dilemma about FB for friendship vs business networks, and I know this is an ongoing inquiry for others. My teen daughter, on the other hand, is vibrantly social in the real, tangible world, and is equally active in her FB universe, and all her worlds mix.
I think sitting in a hut on a beach in Thailand for six months, unwired, might help us all rethink many of the questions we keep asking about social networking/media.
I have to agree with Deborah here. The assumption made in so many anti-Facebook rants is that young people (and us geezers who use it, but especially the young) cannot differentiate between their Facebook relationships and their meatspace friends. That notion is patently absurd.
I keep in touch with long distance folks and keep an eye on the doings of business associates via FB; my real world friendships do not suffer, increase in number, or diminish in any way because of this.
Perhaps more folks writing about the downfall of social interaction re: online interaction need to look at more long term studies rather than fall back on assumptions about behaviors.
Facebookers are just entertaining themselves. It is fun to stand up and let your voice be heard.
Well I don't use it ...yet. Seems like more and more friends are on it and I may or may not succumb to "peer pressure". Don't use text message either...I just find that digital communication can be one-dimensional. If these are friends from real life and they are far away it is useful for keeping in touch, but nothing beats real life face time if it is possible.
You would rather not talk to someone if you cannot see them face to face?
Does that mean that you do not use facebook because you are anti-social or just anti-technology?
Facebook is in transistioin. The number of middle aged people joining is just amazing and they use it differently. It's actually becoming nicer and more fun I think. The trendy set has moved on. The are over at Twitter is my guess. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would joing Face Book but a friend bugged me to joing and I am liking it. It can't take the place of face to face socializing but it still has some value.
There are my friends and acquaintances.
There are people I like to know but they won't want to have anything to do with me.
And there are people who would like to know me and I won't want to have anything to do with them.
No amount of "social networking" is going to change this equation.
If you want to make a qualitative difference in those who you come into contact with, you have to change yourself. There is no getting around that fact. The rest is window dressing.
Who said social networking is about making new friends or making "qualitative differences" in people?
Friends do not let friends play "Mafia Wars" on FB.
I fail to see a significant difference between communicating via Facebook et al and preceding forms of online communication. Concerns about people becoming digital hermits are nothing new.
Facebook is slicker, more creative, and more fun perhaps, but it essentially does the same thing as email, ICQ and other online communications technologies. One could argue that more and more people are opting to use Facebook and other such tools, but it should be remembered that the availability of the Internet has greatly increased in recent years and continues to do so. The numbers alone do not tell the whole story.
While there will always be some individuals who use technology in ways that are ultimately unhelpful or even harmful to them, the vast majority integrate new methods of interaction into their lives without any difficulty. We gain in some areas (speed, efficiency), we lose in others (the art of handwriting, the persistence of a physical letter), but communication continues on- and offline.
To your point that comments on a blog, Facebook page, etc., are not full communication, i.e. conversation, one could hardly disagree. Yet who ever said it was otherwise? Being able to respond to your article instantly and with ease is an advancement on writing to your editor, with a slim chance that my comment would actually be published. But that’s all it is and to think of it as a replacement for live communication, conversation or anything else is to grant it undeserved eminence.
See Russell Bishop's Profile
Thanks, James. I do understand and the question has many moving parts. That's why there were earlier posts about social networking http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-bishop/irrational-connection-alw_b_188577.htmll) and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-bishop/why-social-networking-mat_b_191524.htmll). The discussion will continue as I indicated and I welcome your continued voice in the dialogue.
Ultimately, what I'm hoping to do is create sufficient creative dialogue that we will inspire even more creative thought about ways to build in deeper, more meaningful communication and connection.
One increasingly evident data point presents as both a challenge and an opportunity: the amount of time spent in front of screen-based and digital information sources is rising almost exponentially. The opportunity is one of finding unique ways to establish a broader network of connections and the challenge is how to bring a real sense of connectedness to the process.
(This comment continues in two parts)
See Russell Bishop's Profile
Part 2 - continued commment
Of course, not all network connections or communications are about establishing connectedness. However, the bizarre point/counterpoint in all this might be summed up in two recent stories about Facebook and teen suicide. In the one story, a Facebooker in the UK notes that a teen on this side of the pond is contemplating suicide and a miracle of cooperation and compassion winds up saving his life. On the other hand, another story tells of a teen who committed suicide at The Dalton School while having 512 Facebook "friends".
The challenge lies in how people may be deluding themselves into thinking they have friends because of social networking tools and yet are so isolated and/or inadequate at personal communication that they lack the ability to establish the kind of human connection that drives considerable human behavior.
Thanks again for commenting!
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