This week I began my journey into Facebook, one of several major social networking web sites. Social networking sites are places on the internet where we set up shop for the express purpose of socializing, hanging with our friends.  There are many social networking sites to choose from, MySpace is probably the biggest of them all. So many people are signed up to MySpace, if it were a country it would have the world’s 6^th largest population!

Facebook began as a site that was, until recently, closed to everyone except the university community. It quickly gained a foothold and established a culture and huge following, now it is available to everyone.
So I signed up and began looking for friends, you don’t belong to a social community if you are all alone! My first foray was my daughter’s, I thought they would be a bit reticent about being friends with me as it might not be cool to have a dad in the mix. However, and I am not sure if this is good or bad, they found it very humorous having someone of my vintage in Facebook, many comments circulated and before I knew it I had a considerable list of new friends, all college aged kids who were amused by my appearance.

Now I kind of felt like a dad at a party, young enough to remember the routine, but too old to really participate.

However this soon passed and I began to get into the real strength of Facebook, connecting and sharing thoughts. After all, even though I am not “friends” with a lot of the my daughters group I am intimately involved in their lives. We have all met, in person and we do like each other. They like to keep me informed of their activities, and I like to know what they are up to, and thinking about.

So I get a bit of good natured ribbing, and I dish a little back.

Now I am rapidly expanding my Facebook connections well beyond my daughters, I am still relatively active in theatre, and I have found dozens of old friends from that community on line, spread all over the world, our relationships which had grown dormant with lack of contact are now blossoming again.

Our generation needs to embrace social networking, for several reasons. Most significantly is the fact that our children socialize in this environment and we need to understand it. But there is a benefit to us as well. In our busy lives, we do loose touch with old friends, none of us have time to keep all the relationships we would like to up to date and involved in our lives.

Facebook allows you to keep relationships active, you can visit a friend’s page, get updated through thoughts and photos, and leave a quick comment. It may not be as fulfilling as a long dinner date to catch up, but it is practical, and personal, and actually quite fulfilling.

I love getting a note from a lapsed fried, just a quick “how ya doing, nice to see you are still around”. It puts a smile on my face for a whole day. What else on your computer screen has the potential to do that for you day after day?