Social networking: under the microscope

Walking through the Mall last week with a friend an incident occurred that got me thinking about what really beats at the heart of the social networking phenomenon. We were taking in the sights and soaking up the buzz of the swarms of people who descend on the Mall each and every day when my friend stopped abruptly and said, "quick, don't move!" - which I thought was slightly oxymoronic but I did as she asked. She manoeuvred herself such that I realised  she was using me to shield her from the gaze of one of the passers-by. I said, "what's up - who are we hiding from?" to which she replied, "there's an old friend of mine, I don't want her to see me...". This in itself made me wonder why she wouldn't want to see her friend but then she followed by saying, "she always tries to chat with me on facebook but I always ignore her..." and here comes the cruncher, "....because I don't really like her!!". As we chatted it became evident that my friend never really liked this girl at all.  When I questioned her why she accepted this person onto her friend list she came up with a mountain of reasons. Everything from, "well I couldn't hurt her feelings," to , "she might bad mouth me to the rest of our circle of 'friends'....." to "why not - I don't have to see her". 

Now I know myself that I have friends on f'book who really have only made it there to boost the total number of friends I can 'show-off' to everyone ("oh my God!! You are soooo popular!!!") and if we were really honest with ourselves there'd be more that could identify with that than not. So, I did a bit of research into the validity of social networking and what might be behind the fact that we continue to 'socialise' in cyberspace with those who we could not be bothered speaking to in the real world. Being a relatively new area, the research is by no means deep or robust, but some reasons have been offered that really do make sense. Here are a few: 

1) We feel better about ourselves when we log on and see how total number has grown ("only 2 more friends and I'll hit 100!! YAY!!)

2) The more friends we have the more we appear as a person who is nice, easy to get along with and even socially adept  ("can you believe Marto has 3oo friends??!! Wow, I have got catch up with him....")

3) Perceived success has been positively correlated with the number of ''friends' you have ("geez - johnno must be really kickin it in life - look how many friends he has!!")

All pretty good reasons I reckon to accept the friend request from that kid at primary school who you haven't seen in over 20 years and who used to always chew up his bus ticket and flick it at you making all the other kids laugh and giggle at your expense. I say hit 'accept' cause in the end you'll appear cooler, nicer, more successful and it might be the only way you can finally get some payback for all that torment. Just don't bother stopping and talking to him if you see him walking in the streets....

What are your thoughts on social networking....