We’ve all heard how the Internet is ruining our generation’s ability to socialize. Face to face communication is out of style, replaced by dating and social networking sites. These websites seem to help us maintain friendships by connecting us with people thousands of miles away, but it often feels like they are debasing the quality of our relationships.
Facebook is a big part of my life—I can’t deny that. I, like many of my friends, check it obsessively, especially when procrastinating or waiting for someone to post pictures from last weekend. But since I haven’t yet found myself online chatting on a Friday night instead of going out to dinner with friends, it hasn’t seemed like a problem.
About a month ago, I was sitting in Lau, indulging my Facebook addiction, when I saw I had an unexpected Friend Request notification. I initially assumed the foreign-sounding name was some random grifter creepily friending me before he stole my identity. Then, surprisingly, I recognized that the name that popped up as Senegalese, and, stranger yet, one that I knew.
I met Jacques Ngor Ndour two summers ago when I, and 18 other high school students traveled to Mbissel, a rural village in western Senegal, to teach English and help his town build a wall around the local cemetary. Jacques always stood out among the locals for his constant attentiveness to all of our group’s needs. We thought we were volunteers, but it soon became apparent that the he and his family saw us as their esteemed guests.
The sense of community I found in that tiny African village may sound like a trite college application essay topic, but the contrast between the genuineness of their friendships and my numerous Facebook friends was shockingly striking. To a community without electricity or running water, our short stay was a big deal. Friends and friendly faces seem to grow on trees in America, but for the inhabitants of Mbissel, our interest in their lives was a rare occurrence.
Being Facebook friends with Jacques is great—instead of the occasional letter, we can now chat every week. After only a month on the website, he already has a substantial number of friends, and his online social circle expands by the week. I imagine the 30-minute drive to the internet café is worthwhile to him, especially when the electricity is working and the line for the single computer isn’t too long, that is.
But I worry about the impact that Facebook will have on Jacques’s conception about his life and his community. He has 52 friends; I have 825. Does he think that I keep in constant contact with over hundreds of people the way he talks with fifty? Does he feel like his impact on my life was nothing compared to my other friends’? I don’t ever want to give Jacques the idea that he is just a blip in my network of friends. His genuine openness toward me as a new acquaintance surpassed anyone else’s, and that will always stand out to me.
I know that keeping in touch, even with distant friends is extremely important in Senegalese culture, but Western culture doesn’t always allow time for this. Will Jacques feel forgotten if I stop using Facebook so much? We are so accustomed to letting relationships drift and drop that we hardly notice the friends who cancel their Facebook accounts or stop updating their profiles. The loose definition that we give friendship may allow for extensive networking and invitations to lots of events, but those benefits are making us forget the significance of sincere, caring friends.
There is no way for me to gauge how Facebook will affect Jacques. I am fairly confident that the community he lives in is strong enough to resist the temptation of electronic interaction, but I worry nonetheless. It is probably too late to completely reverse the effect the Internet and Facebook have had on our Western conception of friendship, but a little awareness can go a long way. I know that Facebook will continue to play an important role for me in keeping in touch with my long-distance friends, so I don’t want to deprive Jacques of this function. However, I also hope that the time is coming soon when our society starts to back away from the computer screen and remember the importance of real human relationships.
