Online Social Networking
Hello Dan,
I heard your interview today on WLRN and found your conversation with Joseph Cooper very insightful.
My question to you is about popular social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and similar sites. I conducted a small survey at a local college and found that most students (at the campus) preferred to add a person as an online friend over actually approaching thSOne person in the flesh and starting a conversation.
Do you feel that the average American college student would prefer to trade his or her conversational skills for a profile on Facebook?
Ivan C. Figuereo
Dear Mr. Figuereo,
First of all, thank you for the kind words about the interview. Mr. Cooper is a terrific interlocutor.
About your question ( a good one): Meeting someone in person, especially a first meeting, generally carries with it some anxiety, conscious or unconscious. Almost always, we want to make a good impression and are at least a little concerned that we may not. Facebook and other social networking sites significantly reduce that anxiety, because people can a) hide behind anonymity or pseudonyms; b) edit whatever they say before posting, so as to decrease the chances of making conversational mistakes; and c) deliberately play up or play down characteristics and appearances that are present only in face-to-face meetings.
So yes, I do think that some young people (and many older ones as well) will and in fact do limit the number of new people they meet in the flesh in favor of online connections, as your survey indicates. And I think it’s too bad. I think it takes courage to encounter people in person and know that they will be responding to your whole self, as you will be responding to theirs, without the scrim and disembodied words of the Internet or the telephone. And that kind of social courage is admirable, and essential to our species. It’s one of the reasons statesmen and businessmen still find it necessary to make personal visits in doing their work. And it holds the potential of enormous rewards for everyone.
Dan Menaker
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