Social Networking and the Obliteration of the Private Life

"I'm at MTA - 42nd Street Station "

"Getting condiments for the super bowl party @ Walgreens"

"Lunch: Tuna sandwich on rye bread with a diet coke"

The quotes above are all examples of real messages sent out over Twitter, Facebook and the new service Foursquare by people all over the country. I have modified a few details of the quotes in order to protect the anonymity of the authors, even though the authors themselves were not concerned about their anonymity. These sort of messages are sent out daily, thousands of them, from people in every corner of the globe and in every major language.

There are a multitude of reasons for why people choose to utilize the variety of social networking tools to divulge every detail of their day to the Internet. For some people there is a profound loneliness pervading their lives and the Internet becomes a constant friend. In this vein, I am reminded of the great sociology book Bowling Alone which began to discuss this phenomenon more than a decade ago. For others the allure of achieving a celebrity status is too great to resist and the Internet presents an almost effortless path to notoriety and stardom. And yet for others social networking becomes an organizer and scheduler for their daily life; it presents an upgrade from a paper and pen organizer to a Palm Pilot to a Blackberry to finally leading to Twitter and Facebook.

No matter the reason for why people become deeply invested in sharing every mundane detail of their lives, the end result remains the same: a blurring or even the obliteration of the line that separates our public and private existence. I argue that it is of critical importance for there to be a division between one's private and public life. Many people have bemoaned the lack of etiquette or civility present in this new phenomenon while others have decried it as inane and mind-numbing. Those points may be true or they may not be but what is certainly true is that it is detrimental to personal development to lose one's private life.

The public sphere is where we project our persona and ego. It is where we assert ourselves, question others, comply with what has been asked of us and perform a variety of other tasks that reflect our identities. The private sphere is where we reflect and further develop ourselves. It is in the sanctum of home that we can pause and think deeply about our beliefs, our convictions and our identities. Without the space that a private life affords us, we can become disjointed, fraught with anxiety and stunted in our emotional, psychological, intellectual and spiritual selves.

There are all types of people that do not have a choice but to lose much of their private life: politicians, celebrities, etc. However, the rush to self-surrender every detail of one's life to the world of Foursquare or Twitter is not advisable and in plain speak not healthy living. We ought to remember that the God who divided the heavens from the earth also divided our public and private spheres and we must learn to appreciate the resource the private life offers us, even if that means everyone will not know what cereal was consumed for breakfast.