Résumé en français : avec près de 200 millions de membres, Facebook est un véritable phénomène de notre société. Ses implications dans notre quotidien peuvent aller bien au-delà d'un simple réseau d'amis.

‘James has added you as a friend on Facebook’
There are four possibilities:
a) You know James and are friends in real life, so this is no real surprise
b) You know James and you dislike him with a passion, so this is a surprise.
c) You have a vague recollection of once having met a James (or was his name John?)
d) You went to school with James (but only ever spoke to him to ask to borrow a protractor.)

Facebook: you either love it or hate it. But one thing is for sure - you definitely know about it. A social networking site with millions of members worldwide, Facebook has become a household name, and not just among young people. Although it was originally created for university students, older people are also signing up. It would seem that everyone, from newspapers, to politicians to charities, is jumping on the Facebook bandwagon. A recent study suggests that updating and checking the site is one of the UK’s top three addictions, after coffee and chocolate.
Many people use the site to keep in touch with friends and family, share photos and videos and arrange parties and events. Social networking sites have also taken over from pubs and nightclubs as the most popular place to find love: one in four British people are dating, or have dated, someone they met on a social networking site.
The site promises to help you ‘connect and share with the people in your life.’ However, it would seem that many people have taken this a step too far, and, in doing so, they have blurred the boundaries of what is private and what is public. For example, one woman found out that her six-year marriage was over after her husband posted a message on the social networking site. She only discovered this when a concerned friend -who had read the message- telephoned her.

Also in the news this week was teenager Kimberley Swann, 16, who was sacked from her job as an Office Administrator after branding it ‘boring’ on Facebook. She was hauled into the Manager’s office and given a letter saying that her employment was terminated with immediate effect. And it is not just workers who need to be concerned by the ‘Big Brother’ element to the site; many bosses also check the Facebook profiles of potential employees.
Even on a less serious note, there is no bigger time-waster than the site. It also creates serious competition in the form of one-up-man-ship: who can upload the best photos, go to the best events, and have the most friends. Moreover, Facebook ‘friends’ are often, in reality, friends of friends or people met briefly at a party. (Again, we are back with option ‘c’)

But isn’t a lot of this just scare-mongering? After all, isolation is not purely confined to the realms of social networking sites, and many people use the site to stay in touch with loved ones in different cities or even in different countries.

But perhaps it is telling, and actually quite sad, that, for some, it takes an internet site to ‘help you connect and share with the people in your life.’ For me, the sad absurdity of the Facebook realm came to light when, one day on the bus into the town centre, I was sitting opposite a supposed ‘friend’ on Facebook (we went to the same school, his name is James, the dog ate my protractor) and neither one of us even said hello.