Launch: Social Networking

I am clearly a child of the Facebook age. When Facebook was first created, it was only for college students, and you had to wait for your school to be added to the network before you could join. My freshman year of college, my university was added, and I created my Facebook profile the moment I found out. Since then it's been five years, and I have over 600 Facebook friends from a ton of different places. I've got my college friends of course, but not just them. Facebook's horizons have expanded and now I'm friends with people from high school, my middle school in the Chicago area, the kids of my parents' college friends that we used to meet up with about once a year, family (including both my parents...and a lot of their friends), and even my best friend from kindergarten, who I haven't seen in over sixteen years, since we were both seven. I've even added internet friends that I've never met in person, and most recently, half of the people who work at the bookstore with me.

I am instantly connected to over 600 people that I've met throughout my life with the touch of a button. I've even been posting to Facebook when I update this blog, and while I know not all 621 people I have friended will read it, if they really want to know what's going on with me it's easier than ever. People used to have to wait for Christmas cards with newsy letters about family goings-on to stay connected with friends and family, but with Facebook, keeping in contact with people is so simple that thousands and thousands of miles barely matter at all.

The trouble I have with social networking sites is that when I'm connected to so many people with so little effort, it's difficult to remember to actually take the effort to get together with people in person. Why drive four hours back to my university when I can check up on all my old friends in a matter of minutes on Facebook? Why bother to leave the house at all when I don't have to go anywhere to have a meaningful conversation with somebody? I'm a huge fan of laying around my apartment in my pajamas, so being able to keep connected with so many people without even having to get dressed seems like a blessing, right?

Except that social networking isn't a replacement for a good face-to-face conversation. One of my goals as part of being sucessfully launched is to create a strong social network in real life so that I spend less time being a couch potato and letting my life pass me by while I follow everyone else's on Facebook. And this is a huge challenge for me! I've never been good at instigating events with friends and when I was in high school I'd never call my friends, preferring to wait for them to call me so I'd be sure I wasn't imposing myself on them. So part of what I need to work on is realizing that I'm awesome and that people actually enjoy spending time with me so that I can take action and make plans with these people that I care a great deal about but haven't seen in such a long time. I need to learn to use Facebook as a tool to keep connected to people rather than as the only means of communication at all. Maybe I'll use the Events function to invite people to a holiday party or finally organize a trip to a karaoke bar for me and a few of my coworkers. With Facebook there's really no excuse to let these things slide.

~Fae