On Facebook and Loose Acquaintances

An argument on how Facebook helps manage "loose acquaintances" and the benefits of such.

A decades-old insight from a study of traditional social networks illuminates one of the most important aspects of today's online social networking. In 1973, sociologist Mark Granovetter showed how the loose acquaintances, or "weak ties", in our social network punch far above their weight in their influence over our behaviour and choices (American Journal of Sociology, vol 78, p 1360). Granovetter found that a significant percentage of people get their jobs as a result of information provided by a weak tie. Subsequent studies have revealed that weak ties benefit our health and happiness. Granovetter suggested that this is because these friends-of-friends aren't like you, yet they are likely to be similar enough in social outlook and personal interests to have a positive influence.

My biggest "turn off" with Facebook is the essential neediness of the site. Like the person in high school who really, really, really wants to be friends with everyone. Likewise, I hate the force-fed invites and overall pressure imposed by Facebook fanatics that you "have" to join facebook or you're going to be some sort of technological dinosaur.

Yet, the argument posed above is actually the smartest and most pragmatic reason for joining and participating in "social networking." Now perhaps it is a reflection of my fanatical opposition to facebook and internet dating and basically all forms of "social networking" that I don't find it convincing enough to actually sign up. One issue, unfactored, is time. I'm perfectly willing to believe Facebook assists with the loose connections. But would taking the Facebook time spent and instead spending it on phone calls or emails or going out networking or joining clubs or activities, also achieve the same goal? Would it be better? How could one measure it?

Either way, I'm going down with the ship on this one. Facebook people can threaten me with having no friends, no career, no life, no whatever. I don't care and I'll tell you why. Because certain things, once given away, cannot be retrieved. Once you give up a certain level of privacy, you don't get it back. Now, I'm not a constitutional scholar. I don't know or even care about the "right" of privacy. I'm not looking at it from a legal angle. I'm talking about the choice of privacy. I don't want my activities to be "seen" by everyone. What I want to be seen, gets put up on this blog. But I don't want to share what I did on Saturday with everyone. I just don't. And I don't want to even want to think about the effect of releasing one bit of information to whatever hundreds of "friends" are out there and how that information is taken. It isn't worth it. And won't ever be.