The faceless acussations of facebook

Does a week go by without someone alleging something bad against Facebook? Is this media's way of grabbing our attention and making us read the news? Or is the jealousy rage rising, cos FAcebook is so successful?

The recent article on news.com.au, 'Facebook addicts can't relate', just blew the pipe for me. Clearly the person making these allegations has no clue or has never met a person with 900 friends on facebook.

"If you are not rehearsing looking someone in the eye in three dimensions, but instead you have 900 friends on Facebook ... one does question what kind of relationship they might be having,'' was the allegation put forward.

But this is crazy, I may have a fair while to go to reach 900 friends, but I know many other's well past this fanciful number. And I can assure you their social skills are great, and relationships are strong. You can't just randomly go an add 900 people, although you may add one or two, or a few more, and have a solely online relation that in their terms lacks 'empathy'. Its through meeting them in person that you get to add more people. So obviously some where along the line this person had met these 900 poeple.

the accusation of 'not rehearsing' is absolute attrocity. Shy people will actually feel like contributing online, and become more confident in meeting peole they've already met online, because the introduction is already done. And so what if we rehearse, doesnt that still help us in our interactions with others? Even before the net savvy days, people rehearsed to make face to face conversations, eg when they proposed, met an important person etc. So the fact people rehearse, if in fact they do this on FAcebook, can only be viewed as a positive.

We will all have the story, of meeting someone, forgetting, later finding them on FAcebook. See, fb actually encourages us to form a relationship and meet up with them later. Or how about the times, we've seen someone a 100 million times, but never had the opportunity to talk to them. Remember the times, you would have caught up with a friend, and started talking about what someone wrote on FAcebook. This just goes to suggest that fb even encourages conversations.

I'm an advocate for facebook, for the fact it connects people. There are disadvantages, no doubt, and it in no way replaces face to face conversation, but when this is not possible, Facebook is a great tool to facilitate face to face conversations.

Thus, 'YOUTHS hooked on social networking sites are struggling to relate' has no substance or merit. Facebook enhances relational skills, plus maybe a bit of stalking and bitching on the other side, but that's another blog.