【2010.6.11 纽约时报】网络上的朋友是朋友吗？

月抱琵琶

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/1 ... ?ref=charles_m_blow

Op-Ed ColumnistFriends, Neighbors and Facebook        By CHARLES M. BLOW        Published: June 11, 2010

     
Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Charles M. Blow                           

  

Multimedia  Graphic
Who’s the Guy Next Door? Who Knows?


   


Aside from the people who live in my building, I know the name of onlyone person who lives on my block: Roger Cohen, a Times colleague.
I want to blame it on the fact that I’m absolutely awful with names andcan be quite socially awkward. But that has ever been thus. Then Ithought that maybe it was a city thing, but that explanation goes butso far. I’m actually beginning to believe that it’s bigger than me,bigger than my block, bigger than this city. I increasingly believethat less neighborliness is becoming intrinsic to the modern Americanexperience — a most unfortunate development.
A report issued Wednesdayby the Pew Research Center found that only 43 percent of Americans knowall or most of their neighbors by name. Twenty-nine percent know onlysome, and 28 percent know none. (Oh, my God! When Roger dashes off toParis this summer, I’ll become a “none.”)
Yet I have thousands of “friends” and “followers” on thesocial-networking sites in which I vigorously participate. (In reallife, I maintain a circle of friends so small that I could barelyarrange a circle.) Something is wrong with this picture.
I am by no means a woe-is-us, sky-is-falling, evil-is-the-Internettype. In fact, I think that a free flow of information has led togreater civic engagement. Yippee! However, I am very much aware thatsocial networks are rewiring our relationships and that our keyboardcommunities are affecting the attachments in our actual ones.
For instance, a Pew report issued in November 2009and entitled “Social Isolation and New Technology” found that “users ofsocial networking services are 26 percent less likely to use theirneighbors as a source of companionship.”
Anda May studyby researchers at the University of Michigan found that “college kidstoday are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of20 or 30 years ago.” The reason? One factor could be social networking.As one researcher put it, “The ease of having ‘friends’ online mightmake people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel likeresponding to others’ problems, a behavior that could carry overoffline.”
Furthermore, an articlein The New York Times on Thursday laid out new research that revealedthat “feelings of hurt, jealousy and competition are widespread” amongchildren of parents who obsess over cellphones, instant messaging andTwitter at the expense of familial engagement.
There’s no need to pine for a return to the pre-Facebook,cardigan-swaddled idealism of Mister Rogers and his charming“neighbors” and “friends,” but it is important for us to remember thattangible, meaningful engagement with those around us builds betterselves and stronger communities. I should post that on Twitter.