Social Networking Killing Socialness?

I have always wondered why people have this weird sort of obsession with social networking sites. Recently Facebook seems to be the biggest and most addicting of them all. I have seen kids literally just sit on their ass and stare at the computer screen without blinking for over 5 minutes long. They stare at picture of their friends, comment, write on the walls, and of course use the pointless applications that seem to be a giant popularity contest. I fear for what Facebook is doing to the youth of the nation. Mainly because Facebook has become something more than a web application that allows one to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances. It has become a social phenomenon that allows people to gossip, rate each other, and talk to each other semi privately just like the real world. What sort of damage will this cause to the youths growing up in todays technological society?

First off, Facebook cannot replace the good old forms of communication that we have always relied on. Though some may find actually seeing people and making noises at each other to communicate primitive, it has always been essential to social development. By basically grunting, squealing, bickering, whatever you want to call it, we humans have developed out own society of rules. Social interaction is in some ways even more important than learning because it can be used in any situation. This is why I find this whole social networking obsession kind of creepy. When the youth of today are more into their Facebooks than actually meeting people, what will happen? Will we begin text messaging instead of talking to people right next to us? Will we slowly dumb down the society we live in until even novels are created in a language that is filled with abbreviations and colloquial chit chat? Whatever happens, it will forever shape the social landscape of the world. Maybe people in the future will refer to 2008 as the good old days when people actually talked to each other. Or maybe they'll just refer to it as the dawning of the new age of communication. An age of Facebook and text messaging. A cold new age of digital social ties.