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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.