facebook: is it really social interaction?
So-cial [soh-shuhl] In-ter-ac-tion [in-ter-ak-shuhn]:
I Googled around for something referring to facebook and the controversy of (social) interaction, and boy did I find a few things! A short opinion piece penned by David Brooks, called Facebook Effect, made me think to myself... am I interacting with these people?
Well, I am. I live about an hour away from anyone (even though Cherry Hill seems to be the center of the world!), and I crave the social interactions I find on facebook. If not for facebook... well, I'd be pretty darn lonely up here.
Brooks links to a scholarly article that I could grab using Rowan's Library, and I can understand why, after reading, why some people don't believe facebook leads to more social interaction.
Of course it is a computer-mediated process that interrupts face-to-face meetings (however, there is skype in FB chat and the hangout feature in Google+) -- but the interactive discussion with text makes me feel not so alone within my own text.
This is one of those discussions where there is no right and wrong answer: just different experiences.
Where do you weigh in?