Has Social Networking Improved Your Real World Social Life?

MySpace. FaceBook. Instant Messaging. Texting. Fan sites. Everywhere you go, there is some sort of social networking going on and it's actually acceptable.

Social Networking, in the context of the internet, happens when you join chat rooms, bulletin boards, or websites with the purpose of connecting with other people for various reasons. Maybe you're a Star Wars fan and joined MySpace to meet other Star Wars fans. Or you really like tropical plants and decided to join a chat room that talks about them. Or, like many others, the internet is your way of meeting people who could be potential dates. Either way, social networking is a staple of our techno-culture.

But it wasn't always like that and it wasn't always so acceptable. Back in the early 90's, when I went to college, there weren't too many social networks and the only people you saw on the computers outside of class were either typing a paper or they were "geeks". I walked into a lab one day and there were about 10 people typing furiously and laughing at a monochrome screen. I asked what was going on and they said they were talking to girls in Australia.

This, of course, caught my interest. I joined what was called the Bulletin Board. Pretty soon I was one of them, posting messages in forums and sending x messages (they were the earliest form of instant messaging) to names listed on the board. Everyone's name had a small description or quote attached to it. I traded posts in rooms devoted to race relations, college humor, quotes, Prince music, you name it. If it interested me, I had something to say.

I still remained sociable in real life, but there were many people that were on the bulletin board that didn't really leave the lab until the last possible minute and you didn't hear much from them outside of it. They mostly kept to themselves or hung out with one or two other people at lunch, usually other bulletin board users. But step into their computer world and these guys could type for days on anything! I knew people who met and were married just from bulletin board messages and one exchange of photographs through snail mail. I even went on a road trip with a friend who was dating a girl he met on the bulletin board- a girl four states away.

Of course the rest of the college people looked down at them (and sometimes me) as social outcasts. The internet hadn't quite exploded yet, and there were talk show episodes devoted to the "problems" of people who use the internet to connect with others. But something happened. Maybe it was a grass roots campaign or someone in the dot-com era figured it out, but the more people had home computers and access to the internet, the more they would be willing to buy stuff. And if you bought stuff, you could talk to people about what you bought. If there were millions of people connected to the internet from their homes and not just their computer labs or libraries, surely a few would want to meet up somewhere online and talk about whatever they wanted.

Chat rooms evolved. Instant messaging evolved. Entire websites were created just so people could log on and connect beyond text. You could see pictures of those people who also liked tropical plants and the Indianapolis Colts. Musicians took full advantage of the system to advertise their songs and upcoming albums instead of having to do record signings and a hundred mini-shows all over the country. Television commercials were dedicated to finding that special someone on line, and no one frowned.

So tell me, what happened? When did it become socially acceptable to meet people online? If you frequently use MySpace and other sites, do you go out more or less with people in real life? Would you date someone you met online? Enquiring minds want to know.