Social Networking

Anyone who knows me knows that I teeter back and forth about whether I want to involve myself in social networking. On the one hand, I guess even this blog could be seen as a form of such. However, I believe that my purposes in blogging are vastly different than the purposes that go along with much of the social networking sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I still do not really even know what "Twitter" is, but statistically, all these avenues of networking combined, allow us humans to be invasively involved in one another's lives in no way we have ever historically experienced before. Sometimes I think, "what's the point in getting to know someone when I can read all about them online?" and other times - let's be honest here - we contemplate not wanting to know someone after seeing all their dirty laundry aired all over the pages. I came across the following quote from an article about people leaving social networking sites and why they are doing so. Obviously, I am not calling for any of us to delete our Facebook accounts or stop twittering altogether. But this is just another good reminder about evaluating our motives behind what we write for our status updates, "tweets", etc:

"...Social networking seems to me to often demonstrate the “thinness” of our lives, to use a David Wells term I like alot. What is it about the modern person that so needs to share with and be connected to massive amounts of people? Christian or otherwise, is this a healthy trend? What good, lasting good, comes of it? Or does social networking often highlight our less flattering features–narcissism, need to be linked to popular/cool/attractive folks and exciting events, endless talking/communicating, oversharing, and so on? If you stay on Facebook, and you use it for good ends (like making meaningful kingdom connections, and especially encouraging other Christians and evangelizing friends), great. Keep at it. I’m still on it, and I hope to use it for good insofar as I can." - Owen Strachan