I can share that general feeling, yes. Circumstances in my life things a bit different though, so I wouldn’t draw conclusions from my situation.

my daily / weekly ‘real-life’ activities (lunch, dinner, drinking) with my closest friends haven’t been replaced by online interaction in any way.

however, i do spend less time IRL with 2nd and 3rd tier friends because I can communicate with them online.

by enabling me to efficiently communicate with my 2nd and 3rd tier friends online, social software may actually let me spend more IRL time with my closest friends.

I am a nerd/geek Systems Administrator. I live in a virtual cave (in rural Kentucky). Electronic social systems have afforded me the opportunity to meet and associate with people from all over the planet that I would never otherwise encounter.

Yes, I should get out more often. But living where I do and doing the work that I do precludes many of the opportunities that metropolitan sophisticated folks have, y’all.

If it weren’t for many of the social web apps I currently use, I wouldn’t know about many of the social face-to-face gatherings I often attend.

It all depends on the user’s attitude and the way in which social applications are used. For me it’s just a way of keeping in touch with people I wouldn’t normally be in contact with. Besides, the web provides you with the possibility of expressing your opinions in a much more precise and accurate manner than in face-to-face interactions.

For those of us that decide not to go out as frequently as other people do, I find that social networks such as Facebook actually allow me better opportunities to connect with friends I don’t see too often.

I’ve actually found a few friends I haven’t seen in many years on there and that’s been great for me.

Yes, I have found that as I increase my online social interactions (email, IM, blog posts, etc) that my motivation to “get out of the house” has diminished. However, it’s not just the increasing ease and prevelance of online communication tools (that my elders now use email, that everyone carries a cell phone and IM is mobile, etc) that’s increased my dependence on virtual social interactions. Increasing barriers to IRL interactions (traffic, parking, gasoline costs, increasing distance and busyness of friends and family, etc) makes IRL gatherings more difficult and makes me less motivated to organize or attend.

In terms of good/bad? I appreciate the space that asynchronous communication allows me for reflective thought and editing. I can respond more thoughtfully. The ability to manage the timing of communication (managing interruptions) also draws me to online communication. However, I realize that nimbleness in conversation and interpersonal skills require practice. These abilities will inevitably atrophe if I continue to rely more and more on online interactions.

As control over content increases online (feed readers, forums, etc) my ability to research deeper, more quickly, and with more specificity increases, which I appreciate. But, it also allows me to easily avoid (and simply miss) other conversations and topics that could broaden my knowledge, perspective and interest.

It’s a mixed bag. We need to be mindful and disciplined to not losing skills and experiences that make life more meaningful as social beings as we have more control over our social interactions.

Call me old fashioned, but I am only just getting up to speed with texts, never IM and Skype only when absolutely necessary. Social sites fill me with dread!!

Great topic. A while back I remember thinking about how technology and the web in general has impacted how we socialize with others around us. For example, if you’re in an unfamiliar city and you need directions, you can simply pull out your iPhone and use the Maps feature. You no longer have to approach a stranger for directions. Or perhaps you missed last night’s football game. Do you call up a friend and ask them who won and what were the highlights? No, you visit ESPN.com for video highlights, scoreboards, and discussion. Do I need to call or email my friend to ask him how last weekend’s part went? Not really. I can just look at the photos and videos he posted from the event on Facebook.

So yes, I’d say software and technology have, in a way, made me less social with those that I normally hang out with. But that same software and technology has also allowed me to stay in touch with those whom I’m merely acquaintances with. That’s really the whole reason I like Facebook so much: it allows me to keep in touch with all my friends from High School who have now moved out-of-state, are attending college, getting married, etc.

Overall, I’d definitely say social software is an enhancement to my life, not a detriment.

Thanks for the post Joshua.

For some of us, social software such as Twitter can facilitate our “real” social interactions. Two examples:

When I see my friends face to face, I already know they had a job interview yesterday, or launched a new site, so we can jump directly into talking about those things rather than “catching up.” I find this leads to richer IRL interactions.

My very first experience with Twitter was at SXSWi. Someone sent out the message, “Let’s get random people together for lunch. Meet by the smoothie bar.” And so I had a great couple of hours with people I’d never have met otherwise.

Tough call insofar as my adulthood has corresponded *exactly* with the emergence of the web and pervasive social software. It’s perfectly normal for adulthood to follow a path of decreased “IRL” socialness, so I can’t pinpoint what exactly is the real cause of the fact that I don’t go out drinking and dancing with lots of friends until 4am a few nights a week. I suspect, though, that social software is not the reason.

I wonder how much IRL socialness, however, is of the same intellectual and emotional quality as online socialness? Much IRL socialness is shallow chit chat, largely silent physical proximity, spectator events, listening to deafening music, engaging in athletic activity, dancing, and the taking of intoxicants — all of which are lovely but are very different things from communicating using text via the internet.

There was a time when a good deal of the best human socialness was epistolary (through the mail). Is the net any worse than that?

It depends obviously on the different definitions of “social”. For me it would be a virtual interaction, more than a way of socializing, since you don´t live in the same social environment.

Lots of great ideas in here, from both sides of the question.

It sounds like lots of folks use the web to find like-minded people (weak ties), and that doesn’t necessarily replace their f2f social lives. This is what I find invaluable…while without the web we might find a few folks like us, joining a group (or writing a blog) gets you hundreds of those folks.

And, because your intellectual needs are being met, you may not need as many f2f relationships. But this doesn’t strike me as necessarily bad because those relationships we do have, as @Christopher mentioned, may be more powerful.

I think it’s a cultural thing, Americans are not very social compared to other cultures and I think social software has not made them less social but simply mirrors the already existing social norms of the society in general. It’s hard to meet people online or physically in the states.

In contrast I moved to Brazil and their use of Orkut is completly different than how Americans use Facebook or Myspace. Brazilians are intensely social and meeting new people is a strong compulsion. It’s not very hard to meet people in real life whom you met only through Orkut. Here in Brazil, Orkut isn’t just a social network it’s become a staple of everyday life, it amplified the already existing facet of Brazilian culture that loves to be social.

Twitter’s now provided me a number of connections, still online, that I didn’t have before. If I make it to the Web Geeks Meetup this week, they’ll translate to F2F.

Why is IRL any more real than online, though? At what point does virtual stop being virtual and start being *part of* our reality?

My partner in Slim Kiwi is a designer from Providence. I helped him out 2 years ago via a Craigslist ad he posted. He then hooked me up with a freelance gig for his employer. We met in person once in Boston, for the sake of doing so, before we had our first client. We find ourselves meeting more frequently now, which is great, through client meetings somewhere in the middle, but how does our online relationship detract from us accomplishing very real things?

Socializing is necessary, and I set up lunch dates with friends for that purpose, but social software certainly doesn’t impede that. If anything, social software serves as a very useful tool: We’re typically linked to people for some purpose or reason, so it provides a context that enables more meaningful interactions.

Now, that said, I recall reading somewhere recently, in the context of polarizing American politics, that there was a notion that the Internet was supposed to make us all better-informed citizens and more open-minded because we could access any/all information. What has instead happened is that the Internet has enabled all of these little closed-minded, niche, specific communities and topic sites. Hate liberals or conservatives? Read nothing but conservative or liberal news sites on the web. That schism is what’s really degrading our IRL social interactions. That people can find a stronger affinity with some online community — that might not even be considered a social app, but is creating a community around content — instead of with their neighborhood, that is affecting our ability and desire to socialize with the people around us.

Thanks for extending the conversation, Josh. Cheers!

Very interesting conversation going on over here. I’d like to reply to some of the replies.

@AlexMather: I like the distinction you’re making between tiers of friends (acquaintances, really). Thinking about it that way, I would say that my set of lower-tier friends has skyrocketed in the last six months due to social media, and in my particular case, ANY time taken is taking away from my IRL interactions with my closest friends. It’s not a replacement, as you mention, but, for instance, I’m personally not as likely to pick up a phone and talk to a friend because there’s so much going on on the net. Is that my fault/problem? Yes.

As an example, I just became aware of Josh’s post and read everyone’s comments, then I went and added Josh on twitter. That makes Josh the 460th person I’m following. That means that there’s one more source of potentially interesting ideas that I want to google or links that I want to follow or conversations I want to join. I’m more likely to check twitter and follow the tangents than pick up a phone or go out to lunch with someone IRL. Again, that’s *my* ‘fault’.

@WilliamPapaMeloney: Excellent point about location. What I didn’t mention in my post is that I live in NYC. This means that I can’t take 5 steps outside without seeing people. We have people stacked vertically on top of people twenty stories high here. There are parties or events or get-togethers every single night of the year… Not major parties, but the point is there isn’t a single day you ever have to go here without being around people, unless solitude is your personal preference. Part of my point was that I *used*to* go to a lot of places to hang out with a lot of people, but now, as easy as it is, I don’t do it anywhere near as much.

I think if I lived in a ‘virtual cave’, I’d be RATHER HAPPY about social media!

@MaryWilliams: You bring up a very important point, “increasing barriers to IRL interactions”. I have no incentive to fly to California for a festival or conference to be around people that I can video chat with at the drop of a hat on iChat or skype. I recently took part in a panel @ PodCamp Boston via remote connection from Maryland. Similarly, there’s no reason to spend the time to get ready to go out, travel to a location, sit down, eat and have a drink with someone in order for us to exchange ideas. For that, we can remain in our respective locations (work, home or wherever) and have the exact same conversation, similar to what’s going on right here on Josh’s blog. There’s no need to navigate the barriers to IRL interactions to achieve the exact same effect.

@Daniel: I hadn’t even considered what you’re talking about. You’re absolutely right about NOT calling people to find out about the game and NOT asking them how the party went, but watching their flickr sets and facebook videos. It makes us less physically social with each other, but at the same time, we gain insight into the lives of people that we “follow”.

Which actually brings us to @Marla’s point…

A friend of mine works for Etsy, who just scored $27 million in funding, which I found out through social media. He never told me about it directly but I already knew, so when I hung out with him last night, “how’re things @ work?” was a conversation that we didn’t have to waste time having.

Personally, that’s one of the things that I enjoy the most about social media. I don’t have to have redundant conversations with people. I link them to whatever they ask me about, and they can read/watch it for themselves.

Overall, of course I’m a FAN of social media! I’ve met incredible people because of it that I like and respect and that I have a great time hanging out with IRL or online. I find that as someone who lives in a city with literally MILLIONS of people in it, I interact with fewer and fewer of them as my time is spent online either WITH people that are also into social media or following their links.

I’m going to think about which tiers acquaintances of mine fall into and consider how to re-focus on level-1, even if those friends of mine have zero online presence whatsoever.

If you are interested in extensive empirical investigations of this question, check out the publications of Barry Wellman and others in his Netlab.

Sounds like a similar question to: Has P2P file-sharing increased or decreased music sales?

In the same way many bands’ popularity (& thus sales) have been massively boosted by P2P sharing, I have attended way more ‘in the flesh’ social events as a result of Soc Net sites.

I actually posted about this awhile back. I would have to agree, I think social applications can lead to anti-social behavior.

love what you guys have covered so far. I will offer up another angle. Education. Josh I believe you have a young daughter? I often frame my thoughts around how my behavior on the social web affects my life through the lens of information literacy. Would I be setting a good example for my kids if I had them? How is technology going to play a part in my kids social life? Being born into the social web is different than growing with it (as I have done being a child of the 80s).

Read an interesting article on this topic just recently. The author definitely falls on the “becoming less social” side of the fence. And not just that, but apparently this is all part of a much larger plan…

For me personally, it all seems to balance out in the end. I have some friends that I wouldn’t have had any contact with at all if not for social media, but others who have suffered (or maybe been blessed?!) with less face to face time with me because of it too.

Hmmm… Interesting post! I think two things are important. What type of person are you and about which ‘category’ of friends are you talking about.

I have no idea how this is with teenagers, for instance. Do they use the internet to ‘meet’ instead of face to face? I cannot imagine this for myself.

There’s a difference between ‘active’ friends and old ‘inactive’ friends. Social media has brought me back in contact with people I haven’t spoken to for years. And sometimes we meet again, in real life.

Maybe it all rests on what we mean by the word ’social’. What is it that characterises a social encounter? Can you truly have ‘met’ someone if you have been unable to read their body language, hear their tone of voice – can you truly communicate via a keyboard? In this post,
http://www.nixonmcinnes.co.uk/2008/01/10/is-social-media-social/
my colleague Paul Tero asserts that a social interaction is ‘only social if it leads to actually going out to meet people’. This has spawned a really interesting debate over what it means to be social.

I think @Alex Mather’s distinction between tiers of friends is interesting (although slightly unattractive!) It’s probably the 3rd tier that is most expanded by use of social networks – and where we need to expend the least amount of effort for the most gain. Keeping contact with groups we would previously have drifted away from allows us to extend ourselves further into networked communities – giving us access to greater resources of information, influence and opportunities.
With 1st or 2nd tier friends ‘ambient intimacy’ adds value to our relationships and helps us know and understand one another better.
http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/

@Justin Baum You’re so right about the difference that being born into the social web world will make to our kids’ lives. For them technology isn’t technology – it’s just the everyday stuff around them. They make no distinction between social media or any other media – and perhaps in our search to classify, name and worry about all this we’re getting left behind. My kids spend huge amounts of time on Club Penguin – a virtual world for 8 – 12 year olds in which each child is represented by a penguin avatar. Interactions are limited but it’s a great place for them to learn how to behave online – how to have fun and make friends but how to be safe too.

I’m a person who actively tries to dodge any type of real world social interaction. While it’s nice that it’s becoming more socially acceptible to interact with people digitally, it seems like now there’s this expectation that you must be even more outgoing and transparent in the digital world.

The generation who were born and grown up in this era seem to view their online and offline selves as one and the same. I feel like a lot of the drama that Facebook created with Beacon and newsfeeds came from that older generation of online socializers who still view it as somewhat of an escape from reality. I think the reality is that there are more people now who are totally comfortable being 100% transparent online than there are those who wish to use it as a shield.

Once again, the extroverts have spoiled it for us introverts!

I personally don’t use the internet to communicate with my friends that are close by. As far as virtual communities go, I use facebook essentially to check if I have any new messages and that is about it. If I need to talk to my friends I call them. I do however use a virtual community called Orkut which connects me with my friends from Brazil.
I just finished reading the article written by Professor Rheingold entitled “Look Who’s Talking” (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish_pr.html) I always thought that the more people you stayed connected to the better, but interestingly enough, the Amish believe that if you have the means for staying in touch with those that live far away, you will be distracted from the precious time to be with those that are actually close, namely your family.
This was an interesting realization which I will apply to my cell phone use. And actually, any time that I spend online talking to brazil, is actually time taken away from talking to people from my own neighborhood.
Of course, i have been back to brazil 4 times and maintaining my friendships through Orkut has helped to make those trips possible. Of course, because I’m stretched so thin, I often times spend more time with people afar than people near. An interesting issue. I have had several people from all over the world visit me including people from Brazil and Australia and after I graduate, I will be visiting friends from all over Europe. So my interactions on the internet definitely lead to actual human interaction, but in a way take away from my relationships here in the states.