Just when I join the club, it becomes uncool. Apparently, social networking has been deemed a waste of time and a detriment to human relationships. Or so say a number of articles that I came across this week. Has anyone else noticed a surge in commentary on this subject recently?
Something about Twitter seems to really piss people off. The Daily Beast ran two articles deriding the network this past week.
In "Twitter Jumped The Shark This Week," Mark McKinnon argues that the use of social networking has spun out of control. He calls the onslaught of emerging networks a "social media arms race."
McKinnon believes that building huge networks of friends does not improve "meaningful communication." Instead, it robs people of quality time they could be investing in those who are truly important in their lives.
He also speculates that, since members of Congress have jumped on the band wagon—twittering during President Obama's speech this week—its days of being the new, hip thing are over.
His colleague at The Daily Beast, Lee Woodruff, didn't have anything nicer to say in her article, "Let's Stop The Twitter Madness." She wonders, who has time for this? If you are sending, reading, or replying to Twitter messages, isn't there something else you should be doing?
An article in this week's Economist put the idea of social networking into perspective. Those guys are such smarty pants—they actually applied a scientific theory to the debate.
In a nutshell, they asked the in-house sociologist at Facebook to "crunch some numbers" to determine the average size of member networks and the average number of frequent interactions within a member network.
The numbers supported the Dunbar theory—extrapolated from "the brain sizes and social networks of apes." The human brain can maintain a network of about 150 people (the Facebook study found the average friend network to be 120). But that most keep close interaction with only a handful of people. Again the Facebook numbers agreed—frequent interactions averaged about seven.
I agree with the criticisms of Twitter. In less than two months, I opened an account, checked in regularly, then deemed it ridiculous and closed my account. With Facebook, however, I'm just getting started. I only have 43 friends—far from average.
I may lose my fascination with all the random posts of acquaintances. But at the moment, I'm having fun. It provides endless entertainment when, yes, I should be doing something more productive.
