I am a big proponent of using Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of online networking and communications; I’ve written about it before.  But, like all good things, there is to much.  There is a point of diminishing returns where social networking devices stop enabling us to better our network and relationship with others and begins to hinder them.

I have 769 friends on Facebook.  I have met all of them (at least once) and have benefited from being connected with them on Facebook many times (for example, before I went to Italy I checked Facebook to see if any of my contacts were going to be there also). I am not trying to bash Facebook or any other online communication format, it just appears to me that the value of actual human interactions has somehow been overlooked by many people.

It is easier and cheaper for me to take a few seconds out of my day to write, “Happy Birthday” on a friend’s wall then to go get a card and give it to them.  But there in lies the problem, it is cheap.  While Facebook allows for us to enrich our ability to connect and stay connected to others, but its utility isn’t really that beneficial beyond the connection stage.  It almost cheapens the value placed on the relationship.  In ten minutes I can call my friend up and find out how she is doing and what is new in her life, or in ten minutes I can write on 15 people’s walls and find out how they are doing.  It seems more productive on the surface, but the relationship I have with a friend who is 8 hours away that I talk to one the phone once a month is much stronger then the one I have with my friend who is one block away and I only converse with via Facebook because the person who takes two minutes to call me is spending two minutes of their time on me.

No matter how many different emoticons are developed or how advanced technology becomes it is still almost impossible to catch the emotional aspect of humans and to relay ones body language.  Some people find this to ease the process of delivering difficult messages, but with that comes a lack of accountability.  My friend was recently diagnosed with cancer, and she was very upset.  She physically could not say the word without collapsing in tears so she sent me a message because for her it was the easiest form of communication, and the only one she could handle at the time and I understand why she used it.  There is a lack of accountability that comes with using social networking tools for communication purposes though.  A friend of mine was on a dart team and one day received a message that she was off the team with no explanation.  She called her former teammates, who all ignored her calls and never returned the messages she left on their voice mails or Facebook.  It creates a situation with no closer and lots of questions which can be easily ignored on a digital medium.  If they would have told her to her face she could have asked why without them logging off or blocking her immediately, and they may have felt more obligated to provide an answer for her since she would be in front of them instead of a monitor.

Social networking tools are powerful and beneficial but when they are used to replace human interactions and communication they can be detremental to the networks they maintain.