Online Social Networking

Online social networking is basically a reproduction of an individual’s offline view networks. Some more, some less. So do these differences encourage and promote friendship? Or do they lead to internet addiction and weakening of relationships causing alienation from the real, offline society? My analysis is based on three basic components of social networking websites. Presence, friends & communication. To narrow down our scope, I have focused on the younger generation. Please note, the word Facebook has been used synonymously with a social networking website.

Presence

Teens don’t automatically exist online. They begin by creating a presence, a digital body in the form of a profile. Teens add accessories to their digital body in an attempt to express themselves to be as cool as possible, just like they do when they leave the house in their physical bodies. What exists offline is mirrored online, but the difference is, not necessarily.

The Theory of Facebook
Profile pages are a staged performance. With images carefully selected and put in station and extra information and applications added to make pages look more engaging. This gives off the idea that the identity is all about being attached to other Facebook resources rather than genuine connections with friends.

Addiction
OSN is clearly a tool to develop a ‘high school esque’ popularity. However, when an adolescent turns to his profile page for factual identity, overshadowing his offline existence, it is termed as addiction. The symptoms are cravings for OSN, neglect of family and friends and even change in eating habits unprejudiced like other addictions. The adolescent’s digital body may be gaining popularity but OSN is ruining his life.

Real relationships are about knowing and being known. Real relationships are about honesty and integrity.
The Internet provides a formidable barrier of protection from being truly known. If something goes sour, you can simply delete your profile or username and start over with a unusual identity. But these identity issues are really a human issues & not a technological issues, the solutions lie with how much we choose to live online.

Friends

“…people don’t know what these wretched things called relationships are – and that helps explain why we’re so bad at them.” – Robin Dunbar

Once station up, teens start adding Friends, fleshing out their social network. It includes classmates that they don’t particularly like, people they know from camps and fest as well as their best friends, their whole peer public. Just as you may meet potential love interests at your friends parties, teens find potential friends in their friends networks. Teens may meet new people through OSN but the dissimilarity is in the definition of the word friend.

Redefining Friendship
A friend is a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard, while social networking contacts are simply your peer public. As long as teens do not think that an online friend means the same thing as real world friend, studies show that people involved in online communities with others who are in a similar situations, have healthier immune systems, stronger hearts, and less depression and anxiety – not to mention more fun. However, scientifically based on our brain’s capacities, a community is defined to be strictly below the population of 150 individuals.

Theory of Facebook
Facebook is a threat to your trusty life friendships. OSN came up because individuals like to cease in touch and relish sharing connections with others. Facebook offers sincere friends an opportunity to act like friends when they are not together too. This is a strange situation, as if friends are real, they will hold a connection whether on Facebook or not, but there people are always looking for reassurance about relationships and observe for new, fun ways to keep up to date with one another.

Real Relationships Require Time & Sacrifice.
The Internet community offers an easy-click-away model to relationship building while there needs to be a level of emotionality at the heart of any real connection. If you make it your business to know what the guy you met at a party is doing all the time, it is not friendship but a intrusion on his privacy. You may feel personal about wishing all your Facebook friends jubilant birthday, but if you really think about it, its not. You cannot truly make new friends on Facebook, just superficial connections. This takes us to the biggest problem of online social networking – the manner of communication.CommunicationCommunication takes place publicly on the comments section or the Wall. Often, “Yo, wazzup” “not great, how you? ” “good” may seem pointless, but that supposedly meaningless interaction was a re-affirmation of friendship, and a confirmation that there is no drama. What was really being said was “I’m thinking of you and want validation that we are still friends and that you’re willing to spend time talking to me.” “Yes, of course we are friends. To prove it, I will reply publicly so that others know that we’re still friends.” “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

Theory of Facebook
Facebook is the ritualized allotment of daily social life already in area at school, college, university and workplaces. As if SMS was not enough, it creates a new compulsion to act, reciprocate, over-share information, publicise your personal persona and preserve our networked friends perpetually close to hand. Is all of this necessary? It is unbiased a way to get over the perpetual feeling of isolation forgetting completely how to be alone with our thoughts for a few minutes.

Real relationships and good communication requires kinesics.
Kinesics is interpreting body language, posture, touch, facial expressions, eyes, gestures and understanding the tone of voice. The actual words we use comprise only 7% of self-expression. The Internet trains the mind to respond not to people as they actually are, but on digital facsimiles beating the steady purpose of communication.

Its getting wider not deeper.
This is the crux of the crisis that today’s population is undergoing without even realizing it fully. They are quick to move on to the next ample thing passing lightning quick updates without bothering to finish and ponder on a single idea, statement or social interaction. We end up becoming more and more ‘niched’ into our areas of interest and expertise, but less and less deeply connected.

“Gen Y sees no reason against the ability to work from anywhere, flex-time, a culture that supports team communication, and a “fun” work environment.” – RWW

Verdict

“As someone who’s online 24/7, you have a lot to keep up with. When you’re not blogging, you’re vlogging. When you’re not vlogging, you’re podcasting. When you’re not podcasting, you’re Skyping, texting, IMing, dating, trading, sharing, subscribing, downloading, updating, linking, approving, adding, checking, sending . . . I mediate you get the picture.” – Burt Mister

Online presence is always a staged performance. It is impossible to nurture real relationships online since it requires distinguished more than wall posts, digital pokes and hugs. You do not want to ritualize and devalue your real life friendships by making Facebook the meeting spot. Thus Facebook cannot promote friendship Maybe you have control over your online activities and know your priorities. It is possible for reading a blog to genuinely be good for you or a piece of news to be truly exciting but in the ruin, most of the social web simply functions as a time-killing trivia to distract the youth from real life matters, just like TV.

The Road Ahead

The Cambrian Explosion Stage
Right now we are in the Cambrian explosion stage for online social networking: there are lots of different models, lots of different services, and lots of different ideas. The street, finds its occupy use for technology, changing it and using it for purposes that the developers never imagined.

Email vs. Facebook
It is rare to obtain a technology that springs fully-formed from its inventors hands, that simply solves a problem and gets adopted. E-mail did it, thirty years ago, and the essentials of creating and sending an electronic message have changed little since. However, E-mail did not hack into our privacy or overpower our real life social connections. They were sent only during vacations, or for official purposes. It is wonderful to have an online social network of hundreds of people you know, but the E-mail has something to teach those who are getting alienated from real society.

The Means to an End
While most people gape social networking as an extension of the friendships they share in their real lives, some may be slowing sinking into a virtual world, existing offline but living completely on the internet. Social networking works wonderfully as a means to an end-the end being generating real face-to-face relationships with peers. If old as an end itself, they will ruin society.