by Catriona Mills

The Pitfalls and Pleasures of Social Networking

Posted 30 June 2008 in by Catriona

I never thought I’d be particularly attached to social networking sites.

I’ve never had much of a social network, for a start. And moving in my early twenties to a strange city one thousand kilometres away broke most of my established networks. So I was never really in the position where I was keeping in contact with hundreds of people across the globe.

And then I’ve never had much interest in that aspect of the Internet—I say, on my blog. But, then, this blog is really indicative of that shift in my thinking.

Prior to a couple of years ago, I regarded the Internet as a large, unwieldy, badly written and appallingly edited, mostly inaccurate encyclopaedia. That is, I went to it for information, which I then largely mistrusted. I never treated it as something to which I might contribute, or as somewhere I could go to interact with friends.

Of course, I was already reliant on e-mail, as the primary way of keeping in contact with students and colleagues. I know people—Kurt Vonnegut is one who springs to mind—complain about the impersonal nature of e-mail, but I think it’s fabulous: I once contacted a museum in England about possible access to some material—a nineteenth-century theatrical poster—in their collection, and received a reply e-mail with a high-resolution image attached three hours later. You won’t find me complaining about e-mail.

But I think it was really Pownce that changed my general attitude.

I came to Pownce fairly late compared to others in my social group—which, good little geeks that we are, had been using it on an invitational basis before it went public—but it rapidly became a site where I could keep up an intermittent chatter during the workday without actually interrupting my work to any great extent. As one friend said, it’s like sharing a virtual office with people you actually like.

But from Pownce it was a short step to Facebook. And I don’t regret my Facebook account: I keep my privacy settings locked down, don’t add any questionable applications, and limit my Friends list to people I actually know. (Although I don’t thank Facebook for turning “friend” into a verb—but the issue of verbing is a whole separate issue, for another post.) Facebook is the only way I keep in contact with a number of friends, and the primary way (apart from phone calls and reading each other’s blogs) that I keep in contact with my best friend: it’s easy and fun to send short messages through the day.

Plus, Facebook means Packrat, and we all know how I feel about Packrat.

With e-mail, Pownce, and Facebook already becoming part of a daily ritual, it was a short step to actually starting a blog. That’s a simplified explanation of the process, but largely accurate.

So now I have my webmail provider, Pownce, Facebook, and my blog open in my web browser each day. I don’t have to, of course—I could simply keep my browser closed until I need to Google something. But what’s the point of being socially networked if the network isn’t available?

But today—today I was going to be virtuous. And I was, largely; I wrote nearly one thousand words of a putative journal article on manipulation and verisimilitude in adapted plays on the nineteenth-century suburban stage.

But I was also enmeshed in the toils of the social network.

No significant e-mails came in today, but at one point this afternoon I was trying to map out a structure for the first part of the article, chatting to a friend via the instant-messaging function on Facebook (that ended abruptly: I may have offended him when I suggested that it was nonsense to say that a French-English dictionary was boring), taking part in a six-party discussion on Pownce about whether we can get a Dungeons and Dragons group together, and trying to attract Nick’s attention on another Pownce thread so he could buy me two volumes of a rare Victorian periodical that had suddenly popped up for sale on the American Book Exchange.

(Why, yes: I am a woman of varied tastes.)

Of course, if you’re reading this, chances are you were involved in one of those discussions, which is one of the downsides of being closely networked to a relatively small social group.

(Downside for you, I mean: I have no problem saying the same thing four different times, and will, in fact, talk to the furniture if there’s no one else available.)

Don’t get me wrong; I love my social network. A day when I can chat to so many people in so many different ways that I don’t have to hold an animated, if one-sided, discussion with an armchair is a good day.

But it does reinforce the perils of social-networking programmes: sometimes, if your self control is weak and your propensity for conversation strong, you just have to shut your browser down and work, bereft, outside the network for a while.

Share your thoughts [10]

1

heretic wrote at Jul 3, 03:29 am

I’ve no idea what you mean. It’s not a problem at all when i check twitter, pownce, flickr, facebook, livejournal, linkedin, newsfeeds and email. No problem at all. Just because I have to start again at the first one by the time I do the last one… ;)

2

Catriona wrote at Jul 3, 03:51 am

Well, with that many social-networking sites, I’m not surprised!

E-mail’s the biggie for me, normally: it’s the primary way for my students to get in contact with me. But between semesters: nothing.

And I would have mentioned Blackboard, if this were semester time: I’m supposed to help moderate the discussion forums (fora?) on those, as well.

3

John wrote at Jul 3, 04:08 am

At a certain level, intellectual work can be pursued for a finite period of time, after which I need to do something else, lest my brain explode. In the past, this usually involved endless games of Freecell.

These days it is more likely to entail a couple of rounds of friend’s packs in Packrat, a quick chat on Facebook, or reading the utterly delightful Circulating Library. It seems to me that any of these occupations is better and more productive than watching the inevitable reduction in my Freecell average (I always start so well…)

Should I ever find myself in a job that doesn’t involve sitting behind a computer screen all day, I don’t know what I’d do.

4

Catriona wrote at Jul 3, 05:22 am

John, are you trying (entirely unnecessarily) to curry favour with the moderator?

You’re right, of course, both in that these breaks are necessary so that we don’t go insane and that they wouldn’t occur if we weren’t working on a computer in the first place.

It worries me a little that these sites might end up causing a temporary illusion (or delusion?) of productivity—thinking “Well, I must have done something because look at how late it is!” when really you’ve just frittered the afternoon away on the Internet. The blog’s my big fear, here, because I love updating and it takes time.

But, then, I suppose we wouldn’t do what we do if we weren’t capable of keeping ourselves up to self-directed work.

5

Tim wrote at Jul 3, 09:29 am

We wouldn’t? ;)

6

Catriona wrote at Jul 3, 09:40 am

Do you mean we wouldn’t do this work if we weren’t capable of self direction or that we wouldn’t be so addicted to social-networking sites if we weren’t sitting in front of a computer?

I know in the latter case I wouldn’t be.

I don’t mean that in an only-geeks-have-electronic-friends sense because, firstly, I am a geek and, secondly, that smacks of “why do you waste all your time reading books when you could be living a real life?” and that always irritates me.

(The last person to say that to me was a chronically depressed plumber, who was supposed to be fixing the kitchen sink but was telling me about his late wife. I was so irritated with the assumption that reading negates living a real life that I ended up telling him, but politely, that until he figured out how I could live as a tone-deaf artists’ model in Paris in the 1930s, I was going to finish reading Trilby. Although, oddly, I never finished Trilby. I wonder why not? I was enjoying it.)

But if I weren’t sitting here daily, I certainly wouldn’t be so inclined to think, “Hmm, I wonder what’s happening in that other browser?” But you’re right there, and chances are at least one friend is online, and before you know it half an hour’s gone.

7

Tim wrote at Jul 3, 12:33 pm

Both, but more the former. I engage in a fair amount of online activity and am quite bad at self-direction. :)

8

Catriona wrote at Jul 3, 10:25 pm

And yet you have a Master’s degree; that takes a fair degree of self discipline and restraint.

9

Tim wrote at Jul 3, 11:05 pm

Only by coursework.

10

Catriona wrote at Jul 3, 11:18 pm

There’s no such thing as only by coursework.

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