Well, maybe not but there’s an interesting survey of college students that correlates Facebook usage with grades, and how people (keeping in mind this is just a survey, and there are no real conclusions by the authors) who spend more time on Facebook have lower grades. So, I come to the conclusion that either: a) social networking like Facebook and Twitter make you less intelligent, or b) less intelligent people spend more time doing social networking. (And before anyone hits me, this is (moderately) tongue-in-cheek).
Of course, one could argue that these “social networks” are more “anti-social networks” because people spend more time “interacting” with people over Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and email than they do face-to-face. It’ll be interesting to see if in 20 years we have a generation of people that don’t even know how to talk to people face-to-face anymore. I mean, if you can order books or groceries online, why go to a traditional store and rub shoulders with “real” people at all? If you can text someone, why bother talking to them on the phone?
I think all of these technologies that are supposed to make us more connected are actually making us all social invertebrates (a nice way of saying socially retarded). And lazy. I mean, good grief, this weekend I heard from my sister-in-law about a 14 year old girl she’s known for years who texts her dad one floor above her in the same bloody house to tell him stuff instead of getting off her duff and walking a few steps. Repeatedly, despite how upset her dad gets.
I’m not a big social networking kind of guy since I generally find people intolerable on these social networking sites (people should really have to learn to either spell or learn how to use a bloody spell checker!), but I do find they have some use (i.e. contact me via Facebook since I couldn’t be bothered to give you my real email address, etc.). I’m also only on Facebook maybe 1hr/week.
Of course, it’s also quite possible that I’m already a social invertebrate so none of this applies to me. =)