[grimtrigger]

I don't use social networks (unless you consider HN & reddit) but I think this article is way off the mark. This is especially obvious in immigrant communities where families in different countries exchange photos through facebook. My mom grew up in a small village in India and now talks to her elementary school friend online... thats pretty cool!

The author's argument seems to be "facebook is not a substitute for real social interaction", to which I can only say "duh!". I don't know a single person making that claim.

There's a lot of potential gripes with facebook, but I think the author got started with a clunky analogy and tried to make the article fit it.

[fragmede]

HN and Reddit are prime examples of a social network - and one that could only exist due to our technology. They're also a prime example of technology degrading connection to another human. Consider if we were having this conversation in person, there'd be more "real social interaction", and I'd be forced to note you as an individual, probably recognize if I met you again, and you'd be more to me than an 11 character username that doesn't consider HN and Reddit social networks, for better or worse.

Due to the limited format here, I don't even know if I've 'met' you before, nor if we have 'friends' in common - to jog my memory of where we may have met before, whereas Facebook at least gives me mutual friends.

If you're ever in a room and everyone is checking Facebook on their cellphone, then Facebook has substituted for real social interaction.

[unimpressive]

>Consider if we were having this conversation in person, there'd be more "real social interaction", and I'd be forced to note you as an individual, probably recognize if I met you again, and you'd be more to me than an 11 character username that doesn't consider HN and Reddit social networks, for better or worse.

Let's keep things in perspective here. If it weren't for HN, you and the parent probably would have never met.

I don't see how you can degrade a connection that otherwise wouldn't exist.

[fragmede]

> If it weren't for HN, you and the parent probably would have never met.

Absolutely, and I admit as much in the first sentence!

Degrade was the wrong word to use, but my point is bad thing about technology is that I have no connection to grimtrigger, just a reaction to what was written. Of course, that's also the beautiful thing about technology - it's about the message, not the messenger.

So while the article's analogy was a poor opening, I think the article is spot on, in contrast to grimtrigger. Pre-internet people were communicated with the long lost art of letter writing, and while latency was high, depth of communication was often superior.

[katbyte]

>If you're ever in a room and everyone is checking Facebook on their cellphone

I don't know how many times i've seen people just constantly checking FB, twitter, etc in social situations instead of you know, actually socializing-_-

[oblique63]

> The author's argument seems to be "facebook is not a substitute for real social interaction", to which I can only say "duh!". I don't know a single person making that claim.

I don't think you have to make that claim explicitly to believe it or act on it at some level.

For example, how many times have you ever thought about calling a person, then decided it wasn't really that important so you just facebook/text/email/tweet them instead? Eventually, I would think you stop having that debate altogether and short-circuit the process to just messaging them through some asynchronous medium directly. Nobody would ever argue that it's the same thing, but the habit forms and inertia builds until eventually one method of communication has effectively supplanted the other. It would be so gradual you probably wouldn't notice such a paradigm shift in your life until you explicitly thought about it (possibly after seeing some of its after-effects). I could see that happening...

[tekalon]

I would agree with this. I don't like phones and wish everyone would just text/email/facebook any communications. At the same time, because of this, I also don't feel the need to go out or socialize face to face as much.