Are social networks making us unsocial?

Social networks such as Facebook, StudiVZ, Xing etc. belong to our daily routine. There we can chat, comment and profile. It is beyond controversy: they change our social behavior – especially for adolescent persons. Whether this change describes a relatively positive trend towards our social behavior or a rather crucial development of our ability to physical interaction with people, should be content of the following discussion.

According to Katrin Göring-Eckardt (1) every person that measures its social life by counting the number of contacts in social networks must be assumed to be unsocial. Apart from the fact that social platforms are providing useful tools such as finding old school friends or to receive almost every real time information of a friend´s activity most of these contacts cannot be considered as social friendships as most of our senses such as smelling, listening, feeling etc. are not involved in this non-physical activity. Most of these contacts and the information they provide are addressed to the general public and can therefore not be called “friends”. Concluding from this, she argues: “True friends need care; something one´s will forget while actively gathering contacts”.

Furthermore, 58 percent of Germany´s population agree on the argument that virtual contacts cannot replace real relationships to human being due to superficiality and arbitrariness. These people believe that the promised numerous possibilities social networks provide (referring to interaction among people) will lead to isolation. In addition social networks can use the “anonymity“ to distribute crucial information of people that discriminates them. The bad conscience occurs often too late, at the point where the evilness has spread via the internet and perpetuates the victim.

By contrast, supporters of social networking such as Ilse Aigner (2) argue that these networks enrich our life as they provide a platform for contacts and debates, ideas and innovation. “Online-Networks bring people together, independent from their geographical location and nationality.” People can use the network to increase their profitability, reservation of providing crucial information. This allows the network to be the “virtual supplement” of everyone’s real daily routine and leads therefore to a new understanding of the term “social”. Sascha Lobo (3) refers to a study undertaken by the University of Amsterdam that shows that the internet is improving the social behavior of adolescent persons because of social networks. After a BiTKOM study in March 2010 over 30 million German over 14 years are members of communities. In several school classes 100 percent of the pupils are active in social networks. “These facts proof that we are at the beginning of a digital society where their social structure will be visualized in the internet. Everything which seems to be unsocial in the network – is nothing else but the reflection of the carbon world”.

With regards to the debate I must admit that I stay rather reserved to the fact that (online) social networking can positively impact our social behavior which is in my belief defined as a physically exchanged good from the members of a society. Apart from the useful tools the social network offers (some of them mentioned above) the paramount interest (and for me the most important factor) of a social network the “holistic social interaction between people” cannot be covered by a virtual environment. Furthermore we should rethink whether the current development that forces us to be more efficient on each single transaction artificially hypes the positive perception of social networks so that using them provides the perfect excuses for our time constraints in the today’s working environment. Defining our social life by these networks leads to a certain extent to a pseudo participating society, thus to anonymity. Thinking more abstract one can raise the question: Can anonymity be social?

(1) Katrin Göring-Eckardt, Green President of the Bundestag and the synod EKD

(2) Ilse Aigner, CSU-Member of the Bundestag (Ministry of Consumer protection)

(3) Sascha Lobo, Blogger, Author, Journalist and Web-2.0-Pioneer

Sources:

http://www.taz.de/1/archiv/digitaz/artikel/?ressort=me&dig=2010%2F04%2F10%2Fa0015&cHash=4b3ed122d4

http://www.davidwmullen.com/2009/02/05/do-social-media-tools-make-us-less-social-where-it-counts/

http://mousumi-randomideas.blogspot.com/2009/02/are-social-networking-sites-making-us.html

http://mashable.com/2010/08/02/stats-time-spent-online/