Becoming Digitally Intimate

Social networking has become such a big thing now a days, from the outdated Hi5 to Facebook and Twitter, people are constantly online just browsing, searching and digging about each other. I’m also guilty of doing this of course, and as I constantly browse and read online about the latest on Internet, I begin to realize how much of a phenomenon this has become. Logging onto Facebook is almost the same as poking your head into someone’s room to see how they’re doing on a daily basis. 

Social scientists call this “ambient awareness”, the need to be physically near someone and pick up on their mood through the little things they do, body language, sighs, comments. I personally love to do this, I love to observe people and human nature, there is so much you can learn from someone by just watching them, the little things they do, their routine. But I also believe this has a great downside, this constant “watching” can become addictive when you’re online and it begins to pull you away from reality.

I read an interesting article last night about how Facebook got started in the Harvard campus a few years ago. It stated that people over the age of 30 could just find it absurd to describe their daily activities in detail on a daily basis, as well as follow others, but then again, most of the people I know (including myself) on these networks, they are all over 30! It has become a new routine in our lives, a break in the day to log on to the rhythms of our friends in a way we never have before.

We can tell when our friends are sick or had a bad day, we can receive updates on their mood before we give them a call, or see what they’ll be doing that night, or did the night before lol!! Every little detail is there, from what TV show they are watching, who they are dating, what they’re cooking, how their work day is going, if their kids are being a pain or some people just are (or is)

I find this all so interesting, it’s like sitting on a bench in the park all day and just watching people walk by. Each bit of information is insignificant on its own, every post, every status, some are even incredibly mundane. But, once you put it all together at the end of the day, all these little snippets of information just form into a portrait of your friends, it all just comes together like a book.

But who are all these people that we follow on a daily basis? Are they really our friends? Some are, others can barely be described as such, new connections turn into best buddies (or maybe more) and others fade into your news feed. Maybe the hundreds of “friends” make us feel less alone, but honestly, what kind of relationships are these? This article I read described a study that proved that monkeys can only handle a certain number of “grooming relationships” hahaha, therefore, they had this theory: We need to spend a certain amount of time doing “social grooming”, meaning we need to chat some more, trade stories, gossip, whatever, pick lice if need be, just get to “know” someone well enough to end up calling them a friend. In the case of facebook, poking and owning and sending virtual chocolates, kisses, spanks, quizzes and cocktails do not even bring you close to getting to know someone for real.

Again, I feel that this all this can also have a major down side, you can become so wrapped up in reading people’s daily updates that you begin to rely on these networks to live your life or send messages out to the masses (or someone in particular). You begin to constantly check if someone is happy, see who they are dating, what photos they posted and it gets you to a point where you begin to spread your emotional energy thin, leaving you less time for true intimate relationships. People will post hideous photos of you and then tag you without even considering that you look like total and complete crap haha, couple’s will begin a childish game of indirect posting and status wars in order to tell each other what’s on their mind, sending hidden messages about things they refuse to talk to face to face.

As a Facebook user said, “Sometimes I think this stuff is just crazy, and everybody has got to get a life and stop obsessing over everyone’s trivia and gossiping”, touché if you ask me, we need to create a balance, as in everything else in life. All this new awareness is like living in the dynamics of a small town, “little hell” as it is said in Spanish, a place where everybody knows your business. As I said before, I think it’s all a matter of balance, as everything else in life, we need to make sure we keep things real, down to earth and in focus. I personally like to update my status every now and then, it helps me out during the day. If I have had a crappy day or morning, posting drags the negative ideas out of my head and allows me to look at my life objectively.

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