AUGUST 12, 2009

Shared Experience Via Facebook

I just returned from two weeks out of the country. For me, this meant two weeks of not being at my laptop 24/7, tethered to the internet, repeating my endless cycle of checking work email-personal email-Twitter-Facebook-Google Reader-personal blog-book blog-and so on.

For the record: I survived. Of course, I did have my Blackberry, and added international coverage before I left, so I was able to check work and personal email pretty regularly. But there were times when I was able to log on via computer (thanks to overpriced hotel internet service and some kind woman in Paris, also named Gayle, whose wireless network was blissfully unsecure). And when I did log on, the first and often only place I checked? Facebook.

For me, Facebook was the perfect lifeline to the outside world. It was via Facebook that I was able to partake in the collective grieving over the untimely death of John Hughes. I sat in my dark hotel room watching this montage of Hughes movies set to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and felt grateful that I was able to share my sadness in his death by linking to the video and hearing what others thought.

It was via Facebook that I kept up with where my friends were, how their respective vacations were going, and what was going on at the office.

It was via Facebook that I got a recommendation for this amazing bakery in Paris that I never would have found otherwise.

It struck me that my transcontinental addiction to Facebook only underscores that social networking has profoundly changed how we live, and specifically how we define our individual communities and sense of belonging. Too many days off of Facebook and I feel out of it and disconnected.  A few years ago, I remember fearing that mass media disintegration - brought about by the internet, video streaming and iPods - was in fact threatening common experience and the sense of societal belonging that comes from experiencing events simultaneously with others.  That fear is now gone, replaced by the knowledge that social networks are in fact doing the opposite: they are redefining, and strengthening, our personal communities and in fact facilitating shared experiences.