I went to a birthday party over the holidays and made a new friend. By that I mean: I met someone, we talked at length over the course of a few days, discovered we had a lot in common and parted on very good terms, promising to keep in touch. As I drove home I was struck by the magnitude of what had occurred! In a generation of young people who fly the flag of Facebook, I had done things the old-fashioned way.
Before – after what would have undoubtedly been an awkward and inadequate first encounter – we had availed of the chance to add each other as friends on Facebook, we had spent time making our own minds up, quietly, and often unconsciously, assessing each other on the aspects we believed important. Armed with nothing more than a hurried introduction to exploit as background information, two people had formed an honest and involuntary opinion of each other.
We didn’t know the friends that we had in common, something which unquestionably would have affected our mutual evaluations. We had no idea how many friends we could both claim as our own, no estimate of our respective popularity amongst our peers. At first, we had no idea of the others’ interests, what schools we had attended, whether we had siblings, what countries we had visited or where we were from.
My immediate opinion of my new friend was based on nothing more than the words that came out of their mouth. As the weekend progressed, I also got to see their actions and their reactions to different situations. I had no idea what they ‘liked’ on Facebook, but I could see how they liked to act. I didn’t know their status, but I understood their mood.
I am not asserting that I have just met my new best friend, and did so only because Facebook wasn’t involved. I am not professing to have proven that better friends are not made on Facebook, but in the real world. No, I am just attempting to highlight the fact that Facebook, has, unsurprisingly, made being sociable quite anti-social.
I could have met a horrible or uninteresting person at the birthday party, but I would have decided that they were horrible, or uninteresting, because they seemed it, in my opinion, face-to-face, not because their Facebook pictures were horrible (think endless pictures of burning a cat) or uninteresting (think very few pictures of one family holiday up a mountain).
We will now undoubtedly add each other as Facebook friends, my new friend and I. We will see pictures of each other with our friends, read conversations we have both been having recently. Will our opinions change once we are allowed access to this grotesquely underestimated amount of information about each other? You may think me naïve, but I don’t believe they will.
I have to believe that despite what we may appear to be on an internet networking site, we have gained enough of an instinctive impression of each other to dismiss our online evaluation.
Remember the old friends you have, who always remembered your birthday at school, when no-one else did? You got to know them, and saw that thoughtful side of them, before it was even possible to write a horribly unoriginal message on their Facebook wall along with everyone else who was electronically informed of their birthday. We have, it appears, already let Facebook take away from us worthwhile birthday messages, now it seems to be totally transforming the way we get to know each other.
