I guess the story today is that mostly old people use Facebook, though of course that puts me right in the Facebook main stream.
Having said that, it is clear that people, old or young, who do not use Facebook or at least one of the more popular social networks do not realize how much interaction goes on that has a reasonable amount of social meaning. While I recognize that in-person relationships are deeper and agree with the studies that most of us can only have a limited number of ‘true’ social friendships, the interactions on Facebook have meaning and allow us to interact with people we otherwise would not touch.
My recent example is a post I made recently about a book that was sent by a publisher to Ellen so she could potentially review it, the joy of leaving your sh*t all over the place. My post said: “I am not sure if I’m more surprised that we have this book to read or that we were not the author.”
Now my ‘friends’ on Facebook are people generally I know pretty well and generally I do not post such interesting stuff to cause me to have lots of ‘likes’. This one had more than my norm with something over 20. The 20 included people I:
- Went to high school with and have not seen since then
- Worked with at Sun Microsystems years ago
- Worked with when I was at the US Department of Transportation (USDot)
- Met or worked with while I was employed by a number of Federally facing companies since I was at USDoT
- Met when I was in the College & Young Republicans (a long time ago)
- Met on one (or both) of our Solar Eclipse Trips, one to Turkey and one to China
- Work currently with at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC)
- Met once on a business trip to Brazil years ago and who are based in South Korea and whom I have not seen since though we keep <a little> in touch on Facebook, liking each other’s posts from time to time, though many of his are in Korean
- Met (if that is the right word) on Facebook and have never met in person, but tend to read and comment on each other’s political posts
- Am related to
- Are dating people I am related to
- Have never met and am not friends of at all, but I guess read the post when a friend of theirs liked my post
The point I guess I am making that these networks have allowed me to stay in touch with people I consider friends I would otherwise have limited interaction with, acquaintances who I actually learn more about over time than I might have learned ‘in person’, and with people who have become electronically connected friends of some reasonable depth who I otherwise would never have met at all.
For someone who in many fundamental ways is not so great at 1-on-1 social interactions, I am lucky this stuff came about.