The Schalter

Written by: Louise Morgan

That’s it. It’s finished, Facebook is dead, apparently. Well, maybe that’s slightly premature - but it would seem that while its star isn’t quite fading, it might be flickering oh-so-slightly. According to recent figures, both Facebook and Myspace saw 5% drops in their user numbers: for Facebook, the first drop in a 17-month-long run of growth. Could it be that after the initial burst of interest, the lure of social networking sites is starting to pall?

Up until now, it really hasn’t felt that way. We have, as a society, been swept along by this revolution in human inter-relations. A fair sized chunk of the population, whether they admit to it or not, have Facebook, Bebo or Myspace accounts, spend time in Second Life or run their own blog. The blogosphere has spawned its own real-world superstars, such is its reach and power: Belle de Jour and Petite Anglaise amongst them. Second Life plays host to shows by global-status artists, and a Myspace page is a must for any young band looking to create or cement a following.

But with the fall in numbers and the recent bad publicity the online world has garnered, especially in the case of the Bridgend suicides, are we finally falling out of love with online networking? And if we are, what has changed?

Perhaps I’m just missing the point. More out of sheer laziness than anything else, I don’t have a Myspace profile, and I’m not a member of Facebook: having never felt the overwhelming urge to be poked, butt-slapped or prodded (or whatever the kids are calling it these days) I remain blissfully ambivalent to its virtual charms. I am, you might say, a Facebook Luddite, so I’m left a bit bewildered by the compulsion Facebook acolytes often feel to check and update their pages. As an example, my husband recently went on a trip to some European racetracks with one of his friends and came back muttering darkly about the amount of time said friend had spent glued to his laptop, fiddling with Facebook. Not dissimilarly, a husband and wife I know found that the online hours the Missus was racking up on Second Life were causing some pretty serious marital discord.

That’s not the only downer. Public social networking sites also bring out our inherent competitive streaks. What else explains the veritable epidemic of friend requests from people we’ve never met, will never meet - and in many cases would go out of our way to avoid meeting? This even extends to the compulsion to update profiles… we can’t be seen to be falling behind our peers, and if Jocasta and Dave are conspicuously busy telling us how packed their lives are, we need to respond in kind. When we make our private lives public, we immediately change their dynamics, and while we might spend out Saturday nights flat-out on the sofa watching bad TV with a takeaway, God forbid that we let people know we do.

Maybe that’s the problem with the whole thing: that what was originally seen as a great way to keep in touch with our friends and to make new ones is - in fact - getting in the way of our real social (and marital) lives. We assuage our guilt at not having the time or energy to see friends by reading their blogs or their profiles when it suits us: at work, late at night, on the train… when we could just as easily be spending that time calling them or meeting them for a drink. It’s not the sites themselves, it’s our desire to be constantly connected, always in touch: our fingers clamped firmly on the pulse.

Our need to keep up to date is beginning to take its toll. What Marshall McLuhan once imagined as an “electronic interdependence” is rapidly becoming a dependence on, even an addiction to, tech: as far back as 2003, the New York Times was calling it “the subculture of the Always On”. In 2007, an ICM survey showed that 50% of British 25 - 34 year olds claimed they couldn’t manage without email. While you can assume that a lot of this data-hunger is tied in with our working lives, by extending our desire to be up to speed one hundred per cent of the time into our social lives we’re clearly not helping ourselves. I mean, very few of us were born into a world with email, mobile phones or MSN: how have we managed until now?

The ironic thing about the rise and rise of the social networking sites is the equally brisk rise of the shop-local, ethical slow-food movement and its cousin, the eco-friendly green movement. While they’ve come a long way from the hemp-shirted, sandal-wearing, lentil-chewing old stereotypes, the ‘buy less’ ethos that is deeply ingrained in both movements seems to jar alongside our techno-heavy world. We have mobile phones, Blackberrys and wireless internet - making us contactable and connected wherever we may be. We can check our emails and our text messages, our profiles and our personal messages any time, anywhere, anyhow. Let’s not even consider what all this electronic wizardry is doing to our carbon footprint (who knows: maybe the whole green save-the-planet thing too will pass, leaving us free to charge our phones and laptops to our hearts’ content).

Is it this swing towards the green movement that’s driving the so-called Big Disconnect, then? Are we all tapping into the new zeitgeist and slowing down? Uh, no. We’re far too hooked on our technology, and giving it up is one sacrifice too far. We may be prepared to pay more for our chickens or to separate our rubbish for recycling; at a push, we might even go for seasonal eating. But give up our toys? Not likely. A more probable cause is that The Kids have found far too many of The Grown Ups lurking on Facebook and Myspace - heavens, they may even have come across their parents on there - and if that’s not a cue to get out, nothing is. After all, when pets start networking (don’t believe me? You’ve obviously not run into Catbook and Dogbook yet) it’s hard to take the whole thing seriously: there’s more than a sniff of shark-jumping about the whole enterprise. Maybe the cool kids have just moved on to the next site, the next network: one that we just haven’t heard about.

As for the rest of us, it’s almost certain to be a case of apathy, or perhaps sheer exhaustion with trying to keep up with the Jocastas and Daves of the world. Besides, while Saturday nights in front of the TV with a takeaway may be a dirty little secret, they have yet to completely lose their appeal. It’s not that we’ve made a decision to quit: we just can’t be bothered.

If you’re one of those trailblazer types, though, and the virtual world is starting to get a little overcrowded for your liking, fear not! You can stay one step ahead of the herd with what we’ll call ‘Disconnect’ fashion, courtesy of outdoor clothing company Howies. Founded by a former Saatchi & Saatchi executive, Howies doesn’t miss a trick: its current t-shirt range features two suitably back-to-basics designs: one carries a drawing of a tent, perched on the top of a hill under a starry night sky - with the caption: “My Space”. Another is simply printed with the text: “No I Am Not On F*!&ing Facebook” (or “No I Am Not On Facebook” for the more delicate of constitution). They’ve not got the wrong idea, either: as being connected to everyone and everything at all times has become more the norm, disconnecting is turning into more of a conspicuous lifestyle choice: why not turn it into a fashion statement? Perhaps, just as tuning to as much information and as many media as possible was The In-Thing, being seen to tune out is simply becoming the next must-have trend….

As for Facebook, Myspace and all the others, well, maybe there’s life in the old dog(book) yet.

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This post is tagged Facebook, MySpace, Social Networking