Facebook Nation: Are We Losing Touch? by Margot Calabrese

A number of years ago, I was having dinner with some friends at a now defunct steak place in L.A. I remember a conversation we were having that night (over very dry martinis) that's stayed with me ever since. We were discussing the effects of technology on the ability to communicate verbally and physically and I put forth a hypothesis that the human race would eventually evolve into beings that did not need human touch.

Instead, all communication would be done via wireless devices, or some futuristic gadget that has yet to be invented, even if the communicators were in the same room!

The human element will ultimately be bred right out of us after infancy. Pre-school and grade-school children are already told to keep their hands to themselves. They are not allowed to touch other kids for fear that one touch may be deemed inappropriate. No longer are teachers even allowed to hug or console injured kids. God forbid that child goes home and tells his parents that Mr. Smith hugged him! The school would have a nice lawsuit on its hands. Nowadays, if a child gets hurt on the playground, he is sent to get a band-aid and a phone call is made to the parents. Play dates on the playground will turn into chatter on Ichat.

For older kids, tweens and teens, IMing and texting have replaced the “hanging out” and phone chatting of years ago. Even when friends are together, they IM or text others and each other! The good old English language of these IMs and text-messages has devolved into staccato bursts of letters that make no sense to the unsavvy. “OMG, LOL, ILY, TTYL”, see if you can figure it out! The “social networking sites” like MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook are substitutes for “cruising the boulevards” and getting together in real-time.  I know more and more adults who are making Facebook pages of their own. Many of them say it’s just to keep track of their kids, but I think otherwise! It’s an easy way for them to replace actual conversations with the mantra, “look at my Facebook page if you want to know what I’ve been up to…all of my friends are there!”

As of this date, I do not have a page on any social networking site. I always thought they were the domains of the young. Just the other day though, I was surprised to learn that one of my very best friends; in fact, one of the friends at dinner that night years ago, has started a Facebook page. I hope that doesn’t mean he will never again sit at a restaurant with friends and have steak and very dry martinis!

Alas, someday interpersonal relationships will be a thing of the past…a thing of the early 21^st century and before. The physical will be lost to the virtual. The coffee break will give way to the Twitter break. Doctors won’t need to touch patients. Gone will be the art of letter-writing, expression of thoughts in full and comprehensible sentences, English grammar, the handshake, sex.

Did I scare you? Your Blackberry is vibrating…

Comments

[Don'tThinkSo]

Margot,

Your thesis is interesting, but flawed. True, as a people we're getting too digitally focused, but nothing will replace the value of human interaction. I remember years ago when the internet was just taking off. A common notion in business was that the trade show business was going to go the way of the dinosaur. Why travel to a trade show when it could all be done online? Fact is, today trade shows are one of the fastest growing sectors of the media business because nothing trumps human interaction.

More important than any of that, however, is good old fashioned sex (or new fashioned.. whatever). Your kids may love to IM, but a cell phone will never release endorphins and hormones will never be (fully) satiated digitally (the explosion in internet porn notwithstanding...).

So rest easy and try Facebook. You may just find an old connection who you will want to have a martini with.