An affair with online communication

Three years ago, when I was a freshman, my roommate introduced me to this new site called Facebook. At first, I was uninterested in the idea of creating a profile of myself for anyone from a participating college or university to see. But before I knew it, I was signing up and posting all my hobbies, favorite music and even my class schedule.

Sitting in my creaking desk rocking chair in our tiny dorm, I would get lost in all the connections I could make with Facebook. I found myself checking daily what new schools had been added so I could look for my friends and add them to the growing list of people I knew on Facebook. It was difficult to accomplish anything--much less homework--when the world of Facebook was just a click away.

Now, 516 friends later, I realize that many of the "friends" on my Facebook profile are barely even acquaintances. Sure, some of them are childhood friends or people I've met at UT, but how many of them do I actually talk to? Who would I bother keeping up with (telephones do still exist) if I didn't have the convenient, impersonal means of communication over the internet?

I find the same things true of sites like Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. They are all great communication tools...if you'd rather sit behind your computer screen all day, physically cut off from the world.

I created a MySpace account a couple summers ago to keep up with my boyfriend's journey through Greece and Bulgaria on a school trip. During my brief affair with MySpace, I spent hours staring at my screen, changing my profile background and prying through my other friend's profiles instead of studying for finals or working out.

Then I realized: Why would anyone want to share their deepest feelings and thoughts with all of cyberspace? Facebook is now open to anyone, regardless of whether or not they are college or high school aged. While MySpace tends to attract younger people, there's still the random creepy 50 year old who can leave comments about any photo you post. Twitter and LinkedIn seem to me perhaps a more "mature" version of the first two--sites that target an older demographic and encourages users to communicate with co-workers or high school classmates.

They are not all negative, though. Each site provides a unique way to quickly communicate with people and exchange information. Sites like MySpace have even given local bands and artists a forum in which to display their work and become known. Facebook and LinkedIn give users the opportunity to reconnect with old friends or classmates.

But where do we draw the line as far as "real" communication goes? Can you call posting back and forth on someone's Facebook wall a meaningful friendship? For me, if it's not a person I would make an effort to keep up with by another means, then the online relationship is superficial. And superficiality is, unfortunately, something that comes with online communication.