the “Facebookification” of our lives

American Sociological Association

Contexts Magazine

Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2008

Social networking Internet sites might
be doing more to drive us apart than
bring us together. At least that’s what
the Washington Post suggested as sum-
mer wound down and it took a look at
the “Facebookification” of our lives.
From the 1954 work of J.A. Barnes
to Columbia’s Duncan Watts’ Six Degrees:
The Science of a Connected Age, the
report spanned the sociological trajectory
behind the actual and electronic
networks that, throughout history, have
done everything from help us find jobs
and homes to read about the minutia of
our lives that we post to the Internet.
Perhaps, interviews with sociologists
suggested, these sites miss the
mark because we’re busy adding
“friends” to our network and not busy
networking with friends.
In the end, the Post asked how we
“prevent social networking sites from
becoming the death of social networking”
perhaps the fundamental question
of this new cultural form.