I do tend to exaggerate at times...

... especially with regards to the last sentence of my recent Facebook status update:

...hates that all my best writing ideas occur in the shower. They wash away down the drain rendering completely forgotten by the time I towel off, get dressed, and sit down at my laptop. My New York Times bestseller is being held hostage by my shower drain.

The Flip Side of Facebook and Friendship

The timeliness of a WSJ article titled How Facebook Ruins Friendships is not lost on me given the fact that I just recently wrote about how Facebook has helped me to rekindle some friendships that had faded over the years.

Writer Elizabeth Berstein did make some valid points in her article, but despite the following arguments, I still stand behind my original thesis that, on the whole, Facebook does help rather than hurt friendships.

Having said that however, Bernstein does pose some really convincing arguments that are worth discussing. Some ways she says Facebook can ruin friendships:

• trivial updates that waste space on everyone's news feed (a la, "just dropped the kids off at school", "makin' dinner", "watching Letterman...") If we don't call people to tell them these things, then why are we posting about them? All we're doing with these kinds of status updates is showing people how narcissistic we are.
  
• posting quiz and game results on your news feed implying your ability to spend hours online yet explicitly telling people in person how busy you are
• passive-aggressive behavior is seen as more acceptable because people feel they can hide behind their computer screen
• losing the benefit of body language to help gauge a person's intent.
  

I admit that some of these behaviors can mar friendships and make in-person communication awkward. I have experienced those passive-aggressive posts from people that I felt were directed toward me and so there's an uncomfortableness when speaking to that person face to face. I'm not really sure how to explain how I feel about those people. I don't think Facebook has changed their behavior; they've just suddenly found a venue with which their vices can be more openly on display. Some people are just worse at filtering than others.


I also scratch my head at the banality of posts that iPhone and Blackberry users write like "sitting on the subway" or "waiting in line at Target," because as an English teacher, one of the first lessons we teach our students about writing is the rule of "So what?" You want to write about the first time you fell off your bike? So what? Why was that important? You want to write about your vacation to Disney World? So what? Millions of people around the world have gone there as a kid. Why should I care about your trip there? When writing for or addressing an audience, you always have to ask yourself, Am I answering the internal so what? that all people ask when reading a piece of text? Despite the 140 character brevity of status updates, I think some of our Facebook and Twitter friends haven't learned this rule yet.

So let me help you out here Facebook users. A status update like "...sitting on the subway" is boring because everyone on your friends list is going to say to themselves So what? But if you post something like, "...sitting on the subway, smiling at the young man with piercings and a mohawk who gave up his seat for an elderly lady and then chatted with her for the rest of his ride," people are going to be more intrigued by what you have to say. Suddenly there is no trace of a so what? mulling around in their heads because you gave them the answer to that question. In that short amount of text, you just told everyone, "Appearances aren't always what they seem. Someone whom I initially judged to be intimidating, scary, and defiant, turned out to be courteous, respectful, and likable." Wow! We just witnessed someone learning a life lesson in 140 characters or less!


There's no doubt that some of the things I post on FB could be considered a bit mundane, but for the most part, I really do try to make my posts conversation-worthy. Yes, every once in a while, I'll post something boring like, "I'm tired. Going to bed," but as a general rule, I like to post updates that I feel I would discuss with friends around a dinner table or over the phone.

But for those people who, after reading this blog post, have deemed themselves in the category of mundane status updates, just ask yourself, the following before you hit submit: Is this something that people are going to ask So what? about or did I answer that question for them in these 140 characters?

So yes, turning your internal filter off when using Twitter or Facebook can negatively impact your friendships, but that's the same for us in real life. I was (and still kinda am) someone whose mouth could get her in trouble because I would speak before thinking. I'd like to think that, while there is a trace of that girl with foot-in-mouth disease, I've also learned to scale it back a bit. As social networking continues to grow, the points mentioned by Bernstein are, just like any other life lessons, ones that some people will just have to learn the hard way.

Facebook Taketh Away (Your Time) but it Also Giveth (Your Old Friends Back)

It’s 10 PM on a Saturday night. I’m a young twenty-something woman. I should be out partying with my friends. Instead, I’m at home, glued to Facebook trading insults with an old high school friend whose attempts to swear at me in German using Babel Fish Translator has left him with the unfortunate mistranslation of calling me a donkey instead of a, well, you know.

As I sat there laughing to no one but my computer screen, I couldn’t help but reflect on what a miracle this scene was for me. You might ask yourself why trading German insults back and forth between computers would be considered a miraculous event, but to me it represented how social networking sites like Facebook have helped people reconnect with old friends they’ve lost touch with over the years.

I smiled back at my computer screen and felt a weight lift from my heart. It was as if the past 8 years of not speaking to this friend had just been wiped clean and we were back in high school again, listening to the radio, singing country songs together in his blue Dodge Neon. This moment would have never happened had it not been for Facebook.

I also just recently reconnected with another old friend with whom I had known since 5th grade, but after high school, we just somehow, for no reason in particular, lost touch with each other. When she found me on Facebook, I was joyous. That first message I received from her sent a flood of memories through me of all the good times I spent at her house as a teenager: the haunted housing in October, the quoting lines from Wayne’s World over and over again, the dressing up as Wayne and Garth for Halloween, the gathering for pictures in her front yard before the Homecoming dance. And suddenly, in an instant, we were trading messages back and forth and making plans for a time when we could get together in the near future.

In addition to reconnecting with old friends, Facebook has managed to help keep me from losing touch with my current ones, too. My husband and I have a very close friend of ours who recently graduated from medical school. Her crazy busy schedule, in addition to living 45 minutes from each other, almost led us to drifting apart. But because of Facebook, we’re getting together on a somewhat regular basis now, catching up over tapas and sangria.

There’s no doubt that these sites can consume a very large amount of your time if you’re not careful (and I’ll be the first to admit that I spend way more time on FB than I should), but the dividends can often be much greater than the investment. Through this social networking site, I have actually found that my husband and I are getting together with friends and going out more than we ever used to. We’re making more friends, too, because the people we meet in passing now are no longer people we’ll never see again, but people we can connect with, get to know, and possibly form a new friendship with all because we found them on Facebook.

So yes, please do exercise caution when using social networking sites as we are always warned by the horror stories in the media. But also be open to the possibility that they can change your life for the better. When adulthood sneaks up on us, we somehow let friendships fall by the wayside due to location changes, developing careers, and the formation of marriages and families. What Facebook does is, for a few minutes a day, reminds us that there are people in our lives, outside those we live with, who are important to us too. It keeps us from letting a bucket’s slow leak become empty and dry, as I’m sure has happened to many of our friendships over the years.

So now the question begs, if you’re one of the five people left who has yet to sign up for a social networking site, then I ask you: what are you waiting for? You just might reconnect with someone from your past who’s been in your thoughts over the years but never had the courage to try to contact. Let today be the start of a new journey for those friendships you let slip through your fingers.