And I do need to have, and am lucky enough to have, my ‘at least one real friend’ here in the real world. Social networking is certainly NOT a replacement for human interaction.

But Facebook friendships have their place and their value as well.

No, Facebooking isn’t like talking to REAL people, doesn’t give one the same socialization skills or whatever that we, as a social animal, need.

However, it does allow me to keep in contact with people in a way that I just…wouldn’t…otherwise. I have lived in a number of places. I have lived a number of years. I have moved and friends have moved. I love them and miss them and I am absolutely DREADFUL about keeping in touch.

When I was 13, my family and I moved to a different state than the one I had spent most of my growing up years in. I called and wrote from time to time…one friend and I exchanged ridiculously long letters in sticker-covered envelopes…but I was still so very very out of touch with their lives. When I moved back four years later, they had been through so much without me that I just had no connection with.

Upon my return, my life was hectic, and I was even worse at keeping in contact with the friends I had made in high school out of state.

Then, a few years ago, this social networking site called Friendster came into the world. (oooh! Way Back Machine!) It started a change…then there was MySpace…I found people I hadn’t seen in years and dropped them notes and had little chats. And then came Facebook, with threaded conversations and status updates that encouraged users to post the minutia of their days, from what they were eating for breakfast to how they feel about the weather at that very moment. I don’t only find out that a friend learned the sex of her baby-to-be, but that she has morning sickness, AGAIN. I was thrilled to discover that a childhood buddy has become a world-class dressage horse trainer. I am more thrilled to read how she feels about the finicky new mare that the stable just acquired.

I re-connected with friends from high school…the children I grew up next door to who now live in Spain and the middle east…and they aren’t just friends I used to have…they are people whose daily lives I share in, comment on, think about. I learn of their daily likes and dislikes, joys and triumphs…both large and small. I get to experience the details of their lives, not just the broad strokes one hears about in a letter or rare phone call-to-catch-up…I get to know the stuff that REALLY matters. I get to still have them as friends, rather than “that guy I used to go to school with” or “that girl who I could have been great friends with if we had gotten the chance before life intervened.”

What if an adult were to be spending too much time on facebook?

(*cough* looks around *cough*)

Not that I….know anyone like that. But if I did, where might such a person go for help? You know, “Facebook Anonymous”?

Um, thanks