Cyber Friends

So today I did what I do every morning when I get to the office.  First, I complain about working out, because that's what I do.  I know I need to do it, but it's one of those things I really just don't enjoy.  Next, I drop a venti coffee from starbucks like a bad habit. (which it is)  Finally, I do what millions of other people do across the globe; I get on facebook.  Chances are, most of the people who read this are on facebook right now, so you should be able to follow me pretty well.

Social networking sites have become the most visited sites on the web, and for good reason.  It help us to "reconnect" and "create" friendships.  Don't get me wrong, I really have reconnected with a lot of friends on here from high school and college who I haven't spoken with in years.  The problem I'm having, though, is with garage doors.

A few years ago, Dan Robinson and I went to Nashville for the yearly National Youth Workers Conference.  While there, Doug Fields spoke about how automatic garage doors have messed up the social environment of the US as we know it.  It used to be that when you arrived home, you would step out of your car, say hello to the neighbors, open your garage door, possibly carry on a conversation with your neighbors, then step back into your car, close the door behind you and go inside the house.

The automatic garage door changed all that.  Suddenly, people didn't have to say hello to their neighbors.  People stopped hanging out on the front porch.  I'll bet most of you on here don't even know who half of your neighbors are, much less your next door neighbor.

Then "social networking" arrived.  It used to be that you would call a friend to talk to them, or meet them somewhere over coffee to talk.  Nowadays, people are spending a great deal of their day in chat rooms on facebook or myspace or AIM.  Face to face interaction has quickly become a thing of the past.  In having 1785 friends online, we are considered a "social" person, but we're seeing fewer and fewer people just "hanging out".  

I guess it hit me this summer when a good friend of mine "punished" his kids by making them go outside to play.  His oldest is 10.  Then I started hearing more parents having to do the same thing.  Kids are so "cybered" up that they aren't active anymore, and that scares me a little.  Video games are starting to rob children of their imagination, and social networking is starting to create the facade of friendship for people.

I'll be completely honest.  Not every person that I'm friends with on facebook or myspace is considered a close, personal friend.  Most are really just acquaintances who I happen to write a short note to on their birthdays.  I'm really starting to miss the old days when, the moment kids got home, they went right back outside to play with their friends.  My parents neighborhood has so many children that live in it, yet I rarely see them outside playing.  I guess that just disturbs me.  I miss the days when someone would call you or drop by to talk, instead of saying, "I'll send you a note on facebook".

Maybe I'm just starting to become an old man, but the "old days" seemed to be less fabricated and more real to me.  In a way, I'm a hypocrite.  I use facebook everyday just like everyone else.  Please don't think that I'm calling anyone out.  I'm not.  Facebook, myspace, twitter....they're all great ways to communicate.  I'm really just venting out frustrations about a world that's gotten smaller, but people, and relationships, seem so much further away.