What price MySpace?

By Caitrin McCullough

I was talking to a friend of mine last night about BBSes—she was an early user; I ran one out of my basement thanks to my parents' generous donation of a second phone line and a 2400 baud modem. (She likes to say, "We were on the internet before there was an internet!") This might be old news to most of you, but this conversation was the first time I realized that I—at 27—am the last generation (at least in the United States) that remembers what life was like before the Internet. It's changed our lives in so many ways that I take for granted, for example:

• I can't remember the last time I used a paper map or phone book.
• Holiday shopping is no longer a nightmarish prospect thanks to online wishlists.
• I'm starting to worry I know more about my father's medical condition than his doctors.

The list goes on, of course, and I imagine many people have similar ones. What I'm more interested in, though, is how the omnipresent Internet continues to impact our social interactions. This post asks a lot of questions; maybe some of you can help me find the answers.

I know so much more about the minutiae of my friends' daily lives than I ever did in college, even when we were living right across the hall. That's because they're all on Facebook, and as soon as they change their status, I get a little notification. So while I might go a week without talking to Jane, I know she's baked cookies, watched Heroes, and fought with her boyfriend in the interim. And with Facebook, specifically, there's no distinction between friends, acquaintances, and coworkers in terms of who can see your notifications (though you can choose to display a "limited profile" to certain people). So I can tell when Lou is having an awesome day or when Brett changes his political party. It blurs the lines of what used to be a rigidly defined social structure, which is a whole can o' worms in itself.

I use a few of these online networking services to varying degrees of intensity, and I've got some version of a profile on every one. In my early twenties I was constantly evolving—picking up new interests, philosophies, and friends as I discovered what worked best for me. If I had had multiple public profiles that defined these things for me in rigid terms (as many of them do, in order to facilitate metrics), would I have felt constrained by them? Would I have been mocked as a hypocrite by people who could reference my avowed love for New Kids on the Block last month, when now I'm all about the Backstreet Boys?

There's also the question of online personas versus who we are in "real life": if a person spends more time socializing online than they do interacting with people in person, you could argue that their online persona is the "real" one. My BBS friend told me, of the woman she met online and eventually dated, "There were times we were together when I found myself missing the person I knew online, even though she was right in front of me." This will only get more common as the stigma of internet dating decreases (if it even exists anymore). I hope couples therapists are prepared.

And finally, as technology and speed improve—as online interactions become more multisensory and fulfilling—will the younger generation even recognize the value of in-person conversation? Will webcams become the standard venues for first (and second, third, fourth) dates, and the pleasure of a coffee shop chat forgotten? What happens when this generation has to navigate a social landscape where text messaging, IMing, and blogging aren't available? Just think of what http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow could have discovered if his monkeys had had MySpace.

 

 

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