"Facebook Nation" by John Koessler
Zondervan's blog occasionally features essays from our authors. Today's essay is by John Koessler, author of A Stranger in the House of God.
Facebook Nation
Not long ago I read a New York Times article that described a study by a team of researchers at Harvard focsing on Facebook.com. Facebook is a social networking website that was originally limited to Harvard students and is now popular worldwide. According to Staphanie Rosenbloom, author of the Times, article, the goal of the Harvard study is to understand “…how personal tastes, habits and values affect the formation of social relationships….”
The question of the study, in other words, is this: Do we base our social networks on our personal tastes, habits and values or is it the other way around? Are the personal tastes, habits and values we hold a result of the social networks we inhabit? I wish the researchers had come to me first with this question, because I think I could have saved them a great deal of time and money. The answer to their question is…”yes.” Each one has an impact on the other. These forces create a kind of endless loop, where our personal tastes affect the people we choose to associate with and those people in turn impact our values. “Bad company corrupts good character” and character shapes the company we choose to keep.
No doubt, as a layman, I am sure that I have grossly oversimplified the intent of this Harvard study. I am certain these Harvard scientists already know that there is an interplay between what we like, practice, or believe and who we like to associate with. But what I would really like to know is this: how is internet technology changing our ideas about the nature of the social networks we inhabit? In particular, how is it changing what we call “community” in the local church?
After reading Rosenbloom’s article, I logged on to Facebook and began looking for people I know. I wasn’t entirely successful. I found some of my colleagues and quite a few students. I learned that one of my former students had asked to be one of my “friends”–the word is in quotes–on Facebook. But I couldn’t tell when he made the request. I initially activated my Facebook account several months ago and then de–activated it the same day because it seemed too complicated to me. I worried that the student made his request soon after I first activated the account and read my lack of response as a lack of interest. It was really just a sign of my ignorance.
The fact that someone decided to name this social networking website “Facebook” seems ironic to me; evoking, as it does, the image of a face to face encounter, something that never actually happens there. Oh, there is a kind of virtual presence, conveyed by photographs posted to each member’s page. And there even seems to be a capacity for video messaging, a skill that far beyond my current capacity. You can give your friends a virtual nudge by clicking on the “poke” link. But it seems to me that the entire experience is invested with a general aura of invisibility. This, I think, is the real genius of Facebook and part of its appeal.
For one thing, it allows me to present the face I choose to my cyber friends. I can freeze a moment in time or Photoshop a picture into an icon of myself and let that be the face everyone sees. But the real genius of Facebook is its invisibility. It guarantees that I say what I want and never have to look you in the eye. There is something about the faceless nature of this communication that lends itself to a greater degree of transparency.
The same week that I read Rosenbloom’s article about Facebook, my wife and I attended a small group meeting sponsored by the church we attend. We spent a good part of our time looking uncomfortable and making small talk. We shared a few low risk bits of information about ourselves and watched the clock for the designated time for ending the meeting. It was only our first meeting, after all, and I suppose the group will grow more cohesive and interesting in the weeks ahead. But I can’t help wondering. What would it have been like if we had decided to have our first few meetings on Facebook, before we ever met face to face?
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