Like most of my age group, I’ve been on Facebook (the social network they are talking about when they talk about social networks) for the past 5 years or so. While its still a media phenomenon and despite the fact that a teenager I know recently told me that what I thought was the next big thing, twitter, was only for old people and that Facebook was still where its at, I thought Facebook had more or less run its course for me as many of my friends have completely lost interest and don’t even bother to update the city they are in.
Turns out I can still be surprised. While it didn’t surprise me at all when my mom, my aunts and even my professors joined my social network, I was a little surprised to get friended but Laura, the other “new girl, outsider” in my class in Sicily while I was a high school exchange student. I had been facebook friends with my host sisters from Sicily for several years, but they are all super international so it was no surprise that they were connected. It has been my experience that Facebook has moved a little slower around the world in all groups expect that extremely international, English speaking group my host sisters belonged to.
Nonetheless, I friended Laura, no second thoughts. When I started thinking twice was when someone in Laura’s network, Paulo, friended me. It’s embarassing to say that it took me nearly a day to remember a person I spent a year sitting in class with, but it did and I only remebered after I started digging into their friends and realized that by friending Laura I had connected to a whole year of my high school life, almost everyone I had socialized with in Sicily was part of this friend network.
I recently heard a professor who had interviewed his graduate students about facebook (most of whom are probably my age) say that what was most amazing to them about was that they could connect to almost anyone they had ever met. This is an odd realization to the next generation (more on that later) who takes this for granted, but its astounding for my generation, being on the edge of the precipice as we are.
While my Sicilian friends and I exchanged addresses and e-mails when I left Sicily I don’t think we ever really planned on staying in touch. I don’t think I sent more than one letter nor did I receive more than one. With my regular high school classmates I suppose I expected to see them again either visiting my family or going to a reunion in some distant future. The Sicilians I didn’t think I would. Here in lies the extreme power of the distant closeness in Facebook.