Social Networking Makes Me Sick

             Social networking has made it easier to stay connected with everyone from Grandma Ruth to your boss to the boy who sat behind you in fifth grade math. But at what price?
           
           Aric Sigman published a study (Sigman's study ) last month in Biologist , which revealed that time spent social networking is indirectly proportional to time spent in social interaction.

(That’s time spent talking to someone over a real drink, NOT posting on their wall after you send them an image of a margarita and they get a message that they “partied with you”)

I always find it odd when I get an email from the facebook team - people I know all too little about considering the volume and frequency at which I receive their cheery notes - telling me that a long-lost friend of a friend, whose birthday dinner I might have attended back in 2003, has “partied” (or done some other activity) with me. Really? Because where the hell was I?

The problem is not that a person, who lands just a mark above “stranger” to me in my ACTUAL life, is making a picture of two sheep with party hats on and drinks in “hands” appear on my wall, claiming to be partying with me. The problem is not that these social networks make the probability of me making an ass of myself a mathematical certainty. The biggest problem is also not pertaining to the level of stalkability these sites afford us, or that you know too much about people you should not, or do not, want to know that much about (and probably vise versa). The real problem is that social networking is taking away our face time, and it’s killing us.

       
            Aric Sigman’s research indicated that social isolation, due to the rise of social networking and decline of social interaction, leads to global alterations in human gene transcription in the small white blood cells of the immune system. Social networking is making me sick, and it’s making you sick too. It isn’t just Sigman either, social contact, both subjective and objective, is becoming increasingly associated with physiological changes known to influence morbidity and mortality.


 But then again, I am blogging this.