Less Facebook, More Face Time

Spending less time online and more time on life. That was one of my New Years Resolutions this past year.

While MSN Messenger and Facebook is great, they are extremely counter-productive. Since the emergence of internet socializing, my social life has grown but shrunk at the same time. Since 1996 to now, while I have been able to maintain occasional relations with people I probably would have lost touch with, I have seen actual people in person a lot less.

This seems like the new norm. As our lives are getting busier, people get pushed aside. Work, chores, significant others, hobbies and other take up more time, the first thing that gets cut is social time. While this is not a new phenomenon, it appears that the ratio has become more disproportionate for our generation. The first thing to get cut, is social time. Internet social networking I feel has only contributed to this development.

I also feel like it's created a diluted pool of friends. It boggles my mind how somebody can have 500+ friends. What qualifies as a friend now? Somebody who is a friend of a friend of a friend that I happen to meet once at a party? What happened to the days of having a close group of actual people that would hang out together, in person? The mega successful show Friends, if pitched now, may not even be relevant to today's social construct. I can't think of anybody who hangs out with the same 6 people, whom have no genetic relation to each other, who hang out or play such huge roles in each others' lives.

And now there's even a movie based on the creation of Facebook! How outrageous is that?! As if to glamourize this creation. Will people go in droves to watch this movie, as if to bow down to the new Big Brother?