From MySpace to face time...The news article that made me think!

Student gives up online pals for real-live friends

October 8, 2006

BY MARTHA IRVINE For some, it would be unthinkable -- certain social suicide. But Gabe Henderson is finding freedom in a recent decision: He canceled his MySpace account.

No longer enthralled with the world of social networking, the 26-year-old graduate student pulled the plug after realizing that a lot of the online friends he accumulated were really just acquaintances.

He's also phasing out his profile on Facebook, another social networking site that allows users to create profiles, swap message and share photos to expand their circle of online pals.

''The superficial emptiness clouded the excitement I had once felt,'' Henderson wrote in a column in the student newspaper at Iowa State University, where he studies history. ''It seems we have lost, to some degree, that special depth that true friendship entails.''

Across campus, journalism professor Michael Bugeja -- long an advocate of face-to-face communication -- read Henderson's column and saw it as a ''ray of hope.''

It's one of a few signs, he says, that some members of the tech generation are starting to see the value of quality face time.

'Reaching a saturation point'As the novelty of their wired lives wears off, they're also are getting more sophisticated about the way they use such tools as social networking and text and instant messaging.

''I think we're at the very beginning of them reaching a saturation point,'' said Bugeja, director of Iowa State's journalism school and author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age.

In the October issue of the journal Pediatrics, researchers at Stanford University released findings from an ongoing study of students at an upper-middle income high school in the San Francisco area. One survey found that most students were members of at least one social networking site -- 81 percent of them on MySpace. They also found that 89 percent had cell phones, most with text and Web surfing capabilities.

Henderson is enjoying spending more face time with his friends. ''I'm not sacrificing friends,'' by signing off MySpace and Facebook, he said, ''because if a picture, some basic information about their life and a Web page is all my friendship has become, then there was nothing to sacrifice to begin with.''

AP
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

After reading this news article, I will reach out and spend more time with my friends.

Let's meet up and have fun, pal!