Is Social Networking Helping Us Communicate More...or Less?

This person thinks we're losing actual human communication:

The way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging can be seen as a form of modern madness, according to a leading American sociologist.

"A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological," MIT professor Sherry Turkle writes in her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an attack on the information age.

Turkle's book, published in the UK next month, has caused a sensation in America, which is usually more obsessed with the merits of social networking. She appeared last week on Stephen Colbert's late-night comedy show, The Colbert Report. When Turkle said she had been at funerals where people checked their iPhones, Colbert quipped: "We all say goodbye in our own way."

Turkle's thesis is simple: technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human. Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.

Like anything I think it matters how you use the technology. I do see a lot of people walking around with their heads down scrolling through stuff on their smartphone rather than watching what they're doing (such as the lady that walked into the mall fountain because she wasn't paying attention). However, for me, social networking has provided an opportunity to keep up with people I rarely see.

Take for instance the annual trip to the Rockport Gospel Music Festival. There are people who I see there every year, but in the past knew little or nothing of what they did during the time between Festivals. Now, thanks to Facebook, I can keep up with them and easily touch base in ways I never did before. The same is true with many relatives who live in other parts of the country.

No doubt the whole thing could get quite addictive for some people, but all-in-all I think social networking has provided me with much more communication than I had before.