What Ever Happened to a Community of Friends? Or, Marriage in a Mobile Society. Part II.

...Continued from yesterday.

This whole issue is interestingly tied to a recent episode of To The Best of Our Knowledge called "Privacy."  The guest for the middle segment, Hal Niedzviecki, discusses what he calls "peep culture," which is where we live now.  We put information about ourselves out there on Facebook or Twitter or what-have-you, and everyone else can "peep" into our lives.  It's not, he says, an issue of privacy.  The crux of the matter is our willingness to commoditize our privacy in return for something we want.  But that begs this question: if you're "confiding" in your new online "friends" by sharing  your life on the internet, are you really building friendships?  Where is the line between a true friendship and an unnecessary online overshare?  He has an especially relatable comment regarding use of these technologies to reach out to others:

"The loneliness aspect has much more to do with how we've structured our society into little suburban units connected to cars, connected to work places, the death of public space, the fact that we will now be moving around much more, disconnected from our families, we no longer have multi-generations living in a house in small towns.  So you really do have this sense of the anonymous that hurts people, and haunts them, in ways that I don't think they, or our society at large, fully understand.  So along come these new technologies and we're experimenting with them.  We're reaching out with these new technologies to see if we can ameliorate some of the negative consequences of mass society."

And in another episode just a couple of weeks later called "The New Alone," Steve Paulson conducts a thoughtful interview with Eric Klinenberg, author of Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.  Much of the interview focuses on romantic relationships and people who live alone because they're unmarried, but Klinenberg ends with this to say about social media (horror of horrors!): "We're very early in this experiment of living with those technologies, so let's be open to the possibility that the story is going to change.  For now, the best research tells us that in fact people who are the most active on social media are also the most heavy users of face time - they like to be social.  And they use Facebook and Craigslist and MeetUp and the instant messaging programs and email to have more face-to-face ties.  On the other hand, we also know from some new research that people who are not on Facebook, but who have a lot of people in their lives who are, have a tendency to get left out of social interactions.  They miss out on things.  So in fact, some research I've seen recently shows that the real risk of isolation is in not being connected."

What does this mean?  Should I get on Facebook?  Maybe.  But for some reason, I don't think it is the answer to my questions.

The next segment on that show featured Michael Cobb, author of Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled.  Again (for obvious reasons), this focuses on couples of two, not the wider net of relationships.  But Cobb does address the issue of those other relationships insofar as to say we're putting an undue and untenable amount of pressure on our romantic relationships because we expect our "other" to be all things to us.  If we had enough other others, maybe we wouldn't be tanking our relationships by expecting too much.

"I think what was so fascinating is that we put happiness and fulfillment and life's meaning under the category of that significant other.  In fact, that significant other has to come and represent all of those meaningful amazing things in your life.  I think that's where the problem is, and that's where a lot of anxiety starts to creep into people's existence; it's because they think that this other person is what's going to make them happy, it's what's gonna complete them, it's what's going to make everything okay. . . . You don't have to foreclose the possibility that people will find a significant other and get into some kind of deep relationship over time.  What I'm most interested in is the supremacy of that one narrative, that then makes that couple, that partner that you choose, and overly anxious commitment.  Or let's just say, too much importance is put on that relationship, and often it can never actually fulfill all those expectations and all those needs.  And I think this is one of the reasons that lots of couples break apart."

[This quote is moving off a bit into different territory - is an analysis of couplehood due to complement this analysis of friendship?  Perhaps so, but I'm not sure I'm qualified for that job.]

Regardless, where I think Cobb's point relates to my post is that, because of the societal changes highlighted in the Times article, we often don't have the option of relying on friends and family for the things we once did - companionship, help with the bills, a call-anytime babysitter - so we put even more pressure on our spouses to be all things all the time.  Can the romantic relationship withstand the pressure?  I don't know.

But having some quality face time with friends might ease that pressure.  So set aside a little time, go forth, and make friends!