My *Moment of Zen*

Okay, two weeks ago I felt very old-fashioned and maybe even a bit backward. We discussed the topic "what is a social-network?". Of course, as our course is about new media after a few minutes of general defining the term we nearly solely focused on the question if social network services on the internet like facebook, studivz, myspace count as social networks, too.

Well, my notion of a social network has always been (as the adjective social already suggests) that it has something to do with social bonding, with engaging with people because you like them or you share the same interests, with interaction between human beings - I mean, real interaction in real life like meeting for a chat or going out for dinner, not only playing world of warcraft on some game platform or uploading photos on your facebook account. But in the century of i-phones and avatars this notion seems to be totally antiquated.
Nowadays the term social network is always associated with all those platforms that I already mentioned above. Is it because we live in a digitalized world that our networks are digitalized as well? If that is the case can we attribute social to these networks anymore? I mean, they definetely help establishing professional relationships maybe even globally- I wouldn`t deny that - but can people make friends via studivz or facebook? I would claim that it isn´t possible to establish a "real" friendship through such platforms - especially if we have a look at how real friendship is defined. What really underlines my point here is that in the US the number of "real" friendships decreases according to a 2006 study documented in the American Sociological Review despite the fact that the number of Americans using social network software and websites increases.
So, pages like facebook and studivz do not seem to help to maintain or even establish close friendship. You can write your so-called friends a message on their wall but that is way to superficial as that it could substitute all the other activities that friends normally do together or to help to keep close with somebody. To conclude I would say that it is inappropriate then to call all these platforms "social" networks...