'I think there's a worry that an excessive use or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community," Archbishop Nichols says, "We're losing social skills, the human interaction skills, how to read a person's mood, to read their body language, how to be patient until the moment is right to make or press a point. Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanises what is a very, very important part of community life and living together."

While Nichols was moved to speak on the matter after the death of a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide after being bullied online, his statements seem to imply that all social networking is detrimental for "real world" relationships, as the online universe tends to create a sense of reality that doesn't always translate in the world we live in once we walk away from our screens.

I spent a good part of my day online; most of it for work purposes, but I also connect with many of my friends through keyboards and screens, as we all went our separate ways after college and grad school, and it's the easiest way for all of us to keep in touch. In that way, social networking provides a means to stay connected to people you actually know and love in "real" life, without having to live two blocks away. But what of the connections we make with virtual strangers? The people we speak to everyday that we've never actually met before? Are they helping us, or hurting us?

In some ways, I think the virtual social world is helpful to many of us, myself included, who are painfully shy in real life: it can serve as a type of practice run for actually speaking to people in person. But in other ways, the validation and gratification one gets from doing his or her socialization strictly via the internet can make it seem like going out and actually hanging out with people isn't necessary, which can certainly become a problem if people become too isolated from the world beyond their computer. The retreat into the online world can be especially problematic for those who are being bullied and harassed; the few who choose to spew hateful, awful remarks at an individual suddenly appear to be the spokespeople for the world, if there are no non-internet people around to provide a much needed reality check.

As with most things in life, a balance is needed: if used correctly, social networking sites can help you meet new people in "real life" and serve as a means to continue socializing when you're stuck at work or in a place where it's hard to make new friends. I disagree with Nichols assertion that the online environment makes it harder for us to read moods, or to know when to make a point or to back off; if anything, I've found that I've learned more about how to approach people in certain situations via social networking, as people tend to be more honest and direct in their typing than they are face-to-face. Still, one wonders if that balance is easier for some to find than others—perhaps instead of condemning one form of socialization in favor of another, we should be educating people of all ages on how to live a life both online and off, with healthy boundaries set up to ensure that they don't lose themselves in either realm.

So what say you, commenters? Is social networking hurting your "real world" social skills? Or is it making them stronger?

Transient Friendships On Facebook And Bebo Can Lead To Increase In Teen Suicides Warns Archbishop [DailyMail]

Joseph took Gavin to Hungary, and Avril desperately searched for years to find her lost son. "Over the years we tried everything but couldn't find out what had happened to him," she tells the Daily Mail, and according to the Times of London, "Despite appeals via the Hungarian Embassy in London and the British Embassy in Budapest, and an appeal to Margaret Thatcher, then the Prime Minister, Mrs Grube heard nothing more of her son."

Avril's sister, Beryl Watson, decided to take matters in to her own hands and searched for Gavin on Google. The results brought her to Gavin's Facebook profile. She sent Gavin a message, hoping she had the right man, and weeks later, Gavin responded and agreed to meet up with his mother. "I was so overcome and just said ‘my beautiful son' over and over again," Grube says, "He was very quiet and overwhelmed. We just hugged each other. It is the happiest day of my life, there are almost no words to describe it."

Facebook Reunites Mother With Long Lost Son [TimesOnline]
Joy of mother who discovered her 'kidnapped' son after 27 years... by Googling his name and finding his Facebook page [DailyMail]

Seidler tells SheWired.com that the picture above was rejected by Facebook on the following grounds:

"The image of this ad is either irrelevant or inappropriate. Per sections 3 and 8 of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines, the image on your ad should be relevant and appropriate to the item being advertised. Make sure your image is directly relevant to what you are advertising. Images that are overly explicit, provocative, or that reveal too much skin are not allowed. Images that may either degrade or idealize any health condition or body type are also not allowed. If you choose to submit this ad again, please use an appropriate image that adheres to all of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines."

Seidler refers to the shot in question as "the sandwich shot," and that there's no explicit content in the picture, only, as Boo Jarchow of SheWired notes, "a sexy but by no means gratuitous shot of three women holding each other." Seidler also claims that she submitted the ad to an over-18 audience only, and specifically targeted the ad to "women interested in other women." So why does Facebook think this shot is inappropriate? The filmmakers believe it's just a sign of Facebook's double standard when it comes to promoting "sexy" ads.

The filmmakers are striking back by pointing out Facebook's hypocritical views on what passes as "an appropriate" ad and what's just too scandalous to post: they've created a Facebook fan page for the film and have started collecting offensive ads that Facebook has approved, including this one for a straight dating site:

"When boys and girls kiss (each other) it's ok, but when lesbians look at each other (wearing tank tops) it's not ok," the filmmakers write, captioning the photo.


Another post displays ads that were approved, versus the And Then Came Lola ad that was rejected.


The extremely strange part of this is that Facebook seems to pride itself on its ability to reach a certain set of customers via its targeted ad program. Siedler submitted the ad for a specific group: lesbians over 18, and still, Facebook deemed a simple embrace too inappropriate for its customers, who can always deem the ad "offensive" should they so choose, using Facebook's ad rating system. Not only does this reek of homophobia, it also displays a pretty pathetic sense of what a "targeted ad" is on Facebook's part. By "protecting" Siedler's intended audience, Facebook has simply placed themselves in a position that makes them look as if they find the lifestyle of said audience too scandalous to promote.

As of now, Facebook has not released a statement on the issue, but the filmmakers continue to draw attention to the site's hypocrisy by keeping a running tally of which ads Facebook deems fit for consumption (including shots of half-naked women, bloodied women, and straight couples embracing), a process that shows that some ads, in Facebook's eyes, are indeed more equal than others.

And Then Came Lola [Facebook]
And Then Came Lola [Official Film Site]
Facebook Rejects Ad For Lesbian Film "And Then Came Lola" [SheWired]

So when I received an invitation to join a "Class of 99 Reunion" group, I ignored it. Mostly because I'm not really the reunion type: high school was not really an experience I feel the need to relive, especially in a crappy hotel ballroom in my hometown. But also, because the entire point of a reunion, to catch up with long-lost friends and find out what happened to So-and-So who used to eat his own hair during Biology class has been rendered a bit unnecessary, thanks to Facebook itself.

Almost every person I know has a Facebook account; it's hard to lose track of people, when they are constantly posting about themselves on a daily basis. I've actually locked my profile down, because I'm not really comfortable with getting friend requests from random high school people who are clearly in the biz of either "collecting" friends or using Facebook as a means to facilitate their own personal high school reunions, collecting random gossip and information about long-lost strangers (though I totally understand how fun that can be.)

However, there are a few people that I've connected with on Facebook for these reasons: curiosity has led us to find each other: we want to know what our second grade friends look like, if they have kids, if they ever came out or became a doctor like they said they would, or if they're still dating that jackass from Junior year. The point is this: the people you really want to connect with, you can, without having to travel back home for some giant event where everyone puts on their best clothes and prepares the story of their last 10 years. Facebook provides us with that facade as well: you only see what your former classmates want you to see: their best pictures, their carefully selected favorites, a vision of their lives that seems exciting and fun and perfect.

The invitation to my Class of '99 group is still sitting there; I haven't accepted or rejected it yet. I most likely won't end up going to the real thing anyway, and not just because a night of dancing to "Party Like It's 1999" and watching Drunky McFootball star cry over his glory days doesn't sound like my idea of a good time, but because I feel like our reunion has already taken place, and continues to take place, as we connect with each other not in some stuffy room in our hometown, but from wherever life has taken us in the past 10 years: we may not be the same people we once were, but the wackiness of the internet has allowed us to keep up with who we've become and who we still wish to be.

While Burger King's recent attempts at surreal edginess — "Whopper Virgins," anyone? — aren't going to raise many eyebrows, the fact that "Whopper Sacrifice" involved a notification that you'd been cut for a burger caught Facebook's attention: as everyone knows, people aren't normally told when you un-friend them, one of the few things that keeps the delicate ecosystem functioning. And, not unexpectedly, the scrutiny has opened something of a philosophical can of worms: what is a "friend?" Should you cull ruthlessly, or be generous? And what's the protocol? Justifies a marketer behind "Whopper Sacrifice" to the NY Times, “It seemed to us that it quickly evolved from quality of friends to quantity...which was interesting to us because it felt like the virtual definition of a friend became something different than the friends that you’d want to hang out with.”

Well, yeah. Nowadays those who keep their lists down to an exclusive circle of real friends are in the minority; even if you don't solicit friends yourself you're likely to be found by random elementary-school classmates or old coworkers — and it seems unkind to deny someone who's taken the time to search you out! Most people I know maintain an "everyone within reason" policy and have resigned themselves to distancing Facebook from anything truly personal. And among people under 20, it's standard for "friend" lists to top 300. Some folks I know feel somewhat misled; at first they accepted all requests because they felt honored; now, a year later, they see these relationships as reflections of a culture's diminishing currency.

And then the editing starts. Some Facebook expert tells the Times he "recommends culling your friend list once a year to remove total strangers and other hangers-on. Keeping your numbers down gives you more leeway to be selective about whom you approve in the first place." Part of the rationale for this discrimination is that, as a piece in today's Wall Street Journal makes clear, sites like Facebook are increasingly prone to hacking. "The popularity of social networks and social media sites has grabbed the attention of cyber crooks searching to pilfer passwords, called "phishing," and steal sensitive personal information. The hackers are exploiting users' sense of safety within these sites," and a smaller network could mean, hypothetically, a smaller risk.

But, at this juncture, is such an approach really practical? Whatever people wanted Facebook to be, now isn't it what it is: less a portrait of who you are than a loosely-drawn map of your history, your interests, your associations? Does anyone go to someone else's page expecting to see only bosom friends? No: for the most part you assume you're seeing a collection of friends, acquaintances and strangers, and we've become as adept at reading and interpreting these as a more straight-forward breakdown. If you want privacy, quite frankly, don't join a networking site anymore. As to unfriending, I get it, but it does seem to me a tad cowardly: much more honest, it seems, to reject someone in the first place. Whopper or not.

Friends, Until I Delete You [New York Times]

Beware of Facebook 'Friends' Who May Trash Your Laptop [Wall Street Journal]

And yet, we're photographed more than ever before. Whereas our grandmas could get away with one glam studio portrait for a fella to take overseas, our candid mugs are slapped all over Facebook and MySpace, company websites and phones. Says one shrink, “Our degree of liking or disliking snaps of ourselves depends on how closely they match not our real self, but our ideal self.” Ideal self, nothing; most of us would just like to not look ten pounds heavier than we do in real life, and this can become a vicious circle: knowing how awful you'll look in a picture, that this is the image strangers and future generations will have of you, adds a stress level that invariably sabotages the shot. And of course, this is an anxiety that's far more prevalent amongst women; as Dodai put it, "sadly i think that it is just like everything else; women scrutinize themselves so much because they expect to be under the microscope by whomever is seeing the picture — but guys rarely care if they look dumb/fat/stoopid/stoned/red eyed."

That said, women are far more prone to document and chronicle; I have friends who scrupulously record every event and get-together, and have legions of well-organized albums, records of their lives from which they are conspicuously missing. My own grandmother was devoted to her albums of family pictures, but cut her own face out of every group shot with nail scissors, leaving sinister gaping holes from the years 1947 on. When queried about picture-taking, Jezebels were unilaterally negative. Moe's gone on record in her hatred of the portrait. Anna contrasts her current camera-shy stance with her un-self-conscious childhood mugging. Jessica worries about red-eye and crone-like stooping. Dodai saysshe'll do it — but only if she can control the angle and pose. Intern Anna, on the other hand says, "I kind of like having my picture taken but I always hate the result. I am like a rat pressing the shock-button of picture-taking overnovernover." Iintern Margaret was the one holdout — but only because "during a more body obsessed time I perfected my picture smile Tyra style and figured out which obnoxious pose makes my arm look skinnier. I still automatically snap to that when someone takes my picture." I find it hard to believe any such thoughts would ever have occurred to a group of guys.

I had a disturbing revelation recently. I realized that part of what I subconsciously fear about people looking at my picture is not being able to be there and say, "I know I'm not that good-looking, but I'm really nice!" which is I think a mentality I developed around the age of 14 or whenever. This has nothing to do with the reality of how you look in a picture, and everything to do with control and how you are perceived in the world. And in this way, maybe it's good to have to surrender sometimes to the purely superficial. I'm sure we've all been traumatized by the stark duality of celebrity presentation; the air-brushed perfection contrasted with haggard, dog-walking horror. In this universe, the stakes are raised and control becomes more important than ever. And so we become more and more fearful, and we take more and more pictures, hoping that this next one will be the one that shows us who we really are and want to be — but validated through the objectivity of a lens.
Why do women hate photographs of themselves?[Times of London]
Picture Your Name Here[New York Times]

Earlier: Oh, Really? You Think That's A Good Picture Of Me? Are You Some Sort Of Underminer?
Facebooked: The Art of Choosing A Picture