My girlfriend has a friend who has decided to renounce facebook, myspace and the like. While this is, of course, an acceptable course of action in itself (nobody's forcing him), the grounds on which he has decided to do so are a little iffy.
Firstly, this man lives in Australia, and has many friends in the UK. He has cited that the reason he is deleting his facebook page is because he wishes for his life to be more like it was when he was younger, free of the over-reliance on technology; SMS, social networking, internet chat etc.
Again, there is little wrong with strivance to be free of a life laced by the internet, but when friendships so long-distance rely on a quick and convenient means of communication, is disregarding these means the best course of action, short of wishing to live the life of a misanthropic hermit? I'm sure, at 26 years old, these aren't his plans.
But between disgruntled standup comics complaining about it on BBC3's 'Most annoying things' and those people you meet that say things along the lines of 'I don't participate in all that internet bollocks', I am a little perplexed by the apparent prejudice that surrounds social networking sites. What is really wrong with a fast, free and broad way to keep in touch with everyone you know at a few clicks of the mouse? The Internet is the greatest source of knoledge, communication, entertainment, everything. I recall there were similar attitudes toward mobile phones when they started becoming commonplace, but I'm sure there's already a 12 year old blog covering that somewhere. Maybe people that complain about facebook don't even know why they complain, they just feel its somebody's duty to create a backlash against any new technological development. Maybe they took The Terminator too seriously. I wonder if people were uneasy at the invention of the printing press?
Most of the criticisms against it fail to convince. Some argue that facebook shouldn't be a replacement for real, face to face communication. But it isn't- nobody is sitting indoors on a Friday night, pint in hand, talking to their friends on facebook who are doing the same as them. The last time I checked, pubs and restaurants were still pretty packed-out. I use facebook constantly, but I don't see or speak to my friends less. Another criticism that comes from a very close friend (who, by the way, lives in New Zealand and keeps in contact with his UK friends using the Internet...hmmm) is that if you really cared that much about all the people that you add on facebook, then you'd make the effort to phone them or write them a letter. Write them a letter! This just smacks of a silly, roundabout way to go to awkward lengths just to spite a website. What real fundamental differences are there between a piece of paper and a computer screen? They're just two different means to the same ends, and the former costs money and takes longer. I lost touch with a good friend from School because he moved house and I drunkenly lost my phone around the same time. Obviously I couldn't contact him to tell him I wasn't ignoring him, but guess how we finally got back in touch, nigh on 7 years later? Facebook. My friend may have a point regarding the addition of people you otherwise wouldn't give a second thought in the real world, but that's at the behest of the individual. I personally don't add people I never cared for before.
Then, like it or not, the world has gone the facebook way. Refusing to board the bandwagon in this instance is less a statement of noble defiance and more a petty clinging on to the less-enriched aspects of days gone by. What harm does it do to your integrity to have a facebook page? The benefits outweigh the flaws. In the real world, the world that the anti-facebook brigade seem so scared of falling off, whether or not you are a member makes no difference. And to those that wish to hark back to their bygone glory days, it seems to me that the fact isn't considered that in those carefree days you saw your friends and family every day because you had to go to school and you lived at home. That's the difference between childhood and adulthood, and also the reason that fewer children have facebook pages, they don't need them. In most cases, YOU do. Your friends from school, the ones that were so easy to network with socially, have departed for greener pastures, as you grow up the people you love leave your convenient bubble and spread around the world, and facebook should be commended for supplying a means to make the distant ones seem closer, not sneered at as a misguided target for hypocritical technophobia, and it really does baffle me as to why this hasn't occured to, of all people, a man in Australia whose friends live half a planet away.
Or maybe I just didn't take The Terminator seriously enough.
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