Connected, Yet Unconnected..

The Big Question:

As our lives become increasingly more integrated with new technology, should we begin to fear the gradual disappearance of actual human interaction?

The Small Answer:

First and foremost, I just want to state that I love social networking, both as a means to stay connected with my own circle and to monitor cultural trends, however, there's a devil's advocate for every issue. Here's mine.

I recently attended the 2008 AAAA Account Planning Conference at Loews Resort in Miami Beach, FL. This annual conference is always a wonderful retreat for me since it has the tendency to refresh my confidence in the bright minds, creative thinkers and innovators the advertising industry has to offer. For those on the outside looking in, this particular conference is for Advertising Account Planners, and if you happen to wonder what it is exactly Account Planners do, you'll have to Google it, because it is definitely a long story. However, it wasn't long before I realized that this years "theme" was centered around the new digital front, and more specifically social networking. As advertisers, it is essentially a vital part of our job to monitor pop culture trends and best understand how said trends have the potential to positively effect our clients' business; today, there's no trend more popular than social networking.

That being said, I began to truly put this relatively new genre of websites into perspective and what has dawned on me is that the advent of social networking has probably had the greatest impact on our social behaviors since the accidental creation of the Internet itself! That seems like a bold statement, but just think about this for a moment. My grandparents, my parents and myself included all grew up in eras personified by protecting our personal information. There was a strong sense of privacy and being let into one's inner circle took persistence and trust building. Now, fast forward to the new generation of Internet users, there is an accepted level of interaction and exchange of information unprecedented in our modern history. Never before have individuals been willing, excuse me, WANTING to share their lives and everyday actions with perfect strangers. Voyeurism is no longer taboo, it's mainstream! Don't believe me, last I checked MySpace and Facebook were the 3rd and 5th most visited sites in the United States and FB has recently recorded it's 90 millionth unique profile page (user); that's almost a third of our country's population.

Circling back to the question at hand, I believe although we have the ability to meet millions of perfect strangers across the county, the existing personal relationships we have in place have suffered due to this phenomenon. I remember as a young teenager, I had at best 20 friends whom I lived near and went to school with that I communicated with on a regular basis. Each relationship had substance and actual interaction, also since I only had 20 friends, spending time with each of them was possible. Now, observe the average user of social networking, they have approximately 188 friends according to a recent online study. Approximately one third of which they claim to communicate with on a "regular" basis. The shear volume alone can't possibly allow one to dedicate adequate time to developing a close personal relationship with any one of these friends, not to mention the time detracted from person's they interact with in person. I know what you're thinking, most people know each other before they connected online. Very true, but my original question asked about our future, not today. Should this trend continue, will there be a need for each person to take time out of their busy day to meet and greet another, especially when you can just send a short message requesting to get to know someone else on much more "no strings attached terms." Heaven forbid one should have to commit to being a friend permanently.

As always, I promise to dissect and explain the continued ill effects of social networking on our societies socialization, however one post at a time my friends...

*update: I just learned through the source comScore that Facebook has 132 million original users, however, 63% of which are from abroad. Originally, I stated there were 100 million user in the US, according to Facebook themselves.