As a culture, we love to shop. According to a September 2007 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 66 percent of Internet users reported buying products online. With the proliferation of the Internet, we can shop anytime, anywhere, for anything. We e-shop for clothes, food, houses, cars and … people.
Yes, people. The Internet has redefined the basic human necessity of social interaction and has allowed us to conceptualize self-promotion. AmericanSingles and eHarmony, MySpace and, of course, Facebook are registers of human advertisements.
Meeting people has become analogous to, say, shopping for a car. You see a car, and you think it’s cool, so you go online to read about it, look at pictures of it and compare it to other cars. Similarly, if you meet someone who seems interesting to you, you can go online and read about her interests, learn her favorite books and movies, see who her friends are and judge her sense of style – and there’s even a Facebook application called “Compare People.”
The problem with both of these scenarios is that by sifting through images and information about cars and people, you may learn a lot about them, but you won’t really know them. The idiosyncrasies of a car – the hum of its engine, the speed of the windshield wipers, the comfort of the seats – are all things we can’t learn until we’ve test driven it at least once. The same goes for people shopping; you can’t really get to know someone – his personality, mannerisms or quirky habits – by scanning his Facebook page.
What you can learn on the Internet, whether on Facebook or Cars.com, is information limited by the venue in which it is being marketed. Just as car companies can project a select image through their advertising, we can hide a lot on our Facebook profiles by only allowing others to see what we choose to advertise about ourselves. Take a look at the applications, photos and information on your page or that of a friend; does this image define the entirety of your identity?
Facebook can serve as a social aid, easing the difficulty of face-to-face interaction by allowing us to know at least a little more about a person (for example, relationship status) before we approach. But because of this, the Internet has created new social taboos. It has become socially unacceptable to ask someone a question (for example, “Do you have a boyfriend?”) face-to-face. Why must this question imply we have some sort of alternate agenda when making a new friend, and even if we do, why should inquiring about someone you find interesting be awkward?
In our busy lives, Facebook saves us socializing time – why call a friend when you can post on her wall? But does this kind of socialization fulfill our basic need for interaction? If it is a temporary substitute, maybe that’s why it’s so addicting. In a 2003 poll conducted for the Center for a New American Dream, 83 percent of Americans said they wished they had more time to spend with family. The average Facebook user – there are more than 70 million active ones – spends 25 minutes on the website daily. If we can take that time out of our day to stare at two-dimensional photos of insignificant people, why not devote it to those we know and love or to getting to know people who intrigue us? Just as we cannot find real happiness through drugs and alcohol, the void of social interaction our fast-paced lives have opened up cannot be filled through the infinite stream of virtual socialization.
Facebook is an invaluable communication tool, but it has also made tangible interaction with others both superficially awkward and passé. It’s time we reclaim our basic interpersonal human needs and discover a balance between the book and the face by redirecting some of our time and spending more of it with our friends and family. So the next time people catch our eyes, instead of buying their advertisement on Facebook, I dare us all to put ourselves out there and take a test drive.
Ali Adler is a freshman sociology major. She can be reached at aliadler@umd.edu.
