Has Facebook driven social interaction into a corner? (Part I)

Having already considered the basic ways in which the disappearance of Facebook would affect its users, it follows that I analyze what permanent effects the social network has had on other forms of social interaction and how permanent these changes are to the social communication system. I would like to first point out the ways in which people have become dependent upon Facebook for their social communication needs.

I begin with this simple description of Facebook: Facebook allows its users quick and simple communication on a pleasant interface with millions upon millions of fellow users and the nearly complete ability to individualize one’s profile.

Let us first take the “quick and simple” part of the equation in mind. Less than a century ago, letters were the only means of affordable communication between individuals apart from face-to-face conversation. The rapid advances in technology since then (i.e. relatively inexpensive telephone services and the internet) eliminated the need to await the mailman on the sidewalk every afternoon for a letter or spend large amounts of money sending telegrams across the nation or through the undersea cable system developed in the early 20^th century. Yet it seemed that the price (both with one’s time and money) to pay for not being able to communicate face to face was widely accepted. You rarely see pre-internet individuals in literature and media complaining about how letters are a thing of the past or a genuine waste of time and effort.

I gather this is because these individuals believed being able to communicate with someone thousands of miles or oceans away merited the time and effort spent writing and waiting. People had more appreciation and respect for social communication. They saw face-to-face interaction (particularly during the Victorian period and its reverberating effects on society for years to come) as a formal affair. That being said, how do you think they would have viewed letters and the other few means of distance communication? The rise of stationery shops, calligraphy classes, and the value of penmanship, spelling, and grammar demonstrate the respect paid to the institution of letter writing. Formal attire, nights at the Opera house, tête-à-têtes in reception rooms, calling cards. Someone flip open to any page of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and you will find the enormous level of seriousness and attention dedicated to social interaction before the onset of new social communication media. The question now is: Have we lost all of this?

I think to an overwhelming degree, yes. I believe interpersonal communication is taken very much for granted since the onset of the internet. The ability to hide behind one’s computer screen has opened a whole new world of possibility up for social informalities and deception. This is no longer our classical and amusing Shakespearean comedy of errors, but a grave blow to the identification and maintenance of significant relationships via the latest technology. This is no longer our grandmothers’ keepsake boxes filled with letters from their courtships with our grandfathers. This is no longer the signet ring worn by officials and pressed in hot wax to imbue authority upon communication. In most every way, the sincerity, sentimentality, and legitimacy of interpersonal communication have been stripped away because of social networking sites such as Facebook.