Social+Isolation+on+Facebook

"In this age of email, instant messaging, cell phones, and our supersized.. nation, the very idea that we are becoming increasingly isolated and disconnected from each other seems absurd. However, all of our cyberspace playthings are not satisfying our needs for closeness and friendship" (Irene Javors, //The Isolated American//).

Facebook has become the top method for socializing for a great percentage of our society's teenagers; instead of going out to someones house or somewhere specific to hang out with their friends, teenagers would (many times) prefer to spend their time at home on their computers on Facebook. Yes, Facebook allows people to find their old friends and to stay in touch with family members that live far away, but that is not how most teenagers are using Facebook. The teenagers' parents are most likely using Facebook for that harmless, just to stay connected kind of way, but not them themselves. A much more common use for Facebook among teenagers would be stalking people on their friend list.

Facebook is much more personable than email, which means that people are actually able to socialize much more realistically with people than when compared with email; having a picture or a video of the person you are talking to makes it seem like they are almost actually there with you. (People obviously do not believe that people are there with them, but the illusion is still there). So, to say Facebook is more social than email is safe to do, but Facebook will never be able to replace face to face interactions with other people, taking away (at least partially) from that important social aspect in life that we all need.

"Liking" a comment someone wrote on Facebook about some pointless detail of their life does not have any kind of real sentiment behind it. However, this how most teens interact with who they consider their friends on a day-to-day basis, and because of the lesser amount of human interaction among teens this is having an effect on imperative social skills humans have always possessed and need, and causing social isolation.

The average person on Facebook has about 281 friends in their network ([|according to Neil Swidey from the Boston Globe]). However, in the book //The Tipping Point,// author Malcolm Gladwell reveals that what he calls the "magic number" is 150. This magic number represents the maximum number of people that a single person can have a genuine, personal relationship with at any one time in their life. So, more than half of the people on one's Facebook network are not actual //real// friends of that person. Those people that are very obviously not friends of the person have most likely never had actual (meaningful) social interactions with that person anyway, so cyber socializing is much less significant than actual socializing.

This lack of meaningful personal interactions with other people is obviously and seriously affecting our society. "Most Americans have one-third fewer close friends and confidants than 2 decades ago, and the number of people who have none has more than doubled" (Irene Javors, //The Isolated American//). Because people are not being social, the number of close friends people have is being affected. On an even greater scale, this is contributing to the isolation among teenagers, since once again, their free time is not spent hanging out at a friend's house as much as in past generations, but instead is spent staring at the computer screen, watching their peers' every move on Facebook.

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