The importance of Self – or, why we need to keep social networking in perspective

Remember how we all used to value ‘me-time’? How we craved a long, leisurely soak in the bath, with the door locked and, for company, all we had were our personal concerns for the effects of Aloe Vera salts on our skin. Remember the last time you said, “Tonight, I’m going to catch up on my correspondence!”

Oh, how the pendulum has swung the other way. Social networking has become de rigueur – and if you are unsure what that means, just hook up to Wikipedia, the social encyclopaedia, where it says "necessary according to etiquette, common sense, protocol or fashion." In other words, if you’re not on, you’re out!

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Blogger, Google Buzz, Linkedin, and Windows Messenger – the list is seemingly endless. The drain on our personal time and the gain to our self-importance knows no end. So, what do we do in the mornings, when we wake up and consider the potential for the new day? Do we go and brew a refreshing mug of mint tea and stare wistfully at the dawn, the miracle of each morning? Do we sit in the garden and make a list of the projects, the possibilities for the next stage of our personal journey?

No! We log on.

We measure our personal value by how many ‘friends’ have posted messages on our wall overnight. We bask in the glow of forgotten school friends emerging from the mists of time to request space in our unique white noise laden universe. And with every message, each reminder of our past glories, or invitation to name a friends new pet iguana, our regard for our personal reputation ramps up another notch. Again, with the benefit of Wikipedia’s ill regulated, knowledge for the masses platform, it’s easy to access the marker – Self Importance: Excessively high regard for one's own importance or station; conceit.

So there it is; the final word on the matter. Conceit. It’s all we have as a measure for our personally engineered self-image. An image framed by the number of friends we can claim, the amount of photographs that we are ‘tagged’ in, the number of secrets we have blatantly trumpeted to the best friend of our son’s third, and now ex-girlfriends’, family’s Latvian relative who recently spent 3 days in London having been diverted to Stanstead when a cheap flight to Riga was cancelled due to fog! How did they get my name? Who cares? We’re happy to share!

So, it’s time to get some perspective. Time to kick out against the cult of the individual. Time to rediscover all the things that time ‘spent on-line’ have consigned to the list of “if I’ve got time’ – like actually talking to people and rekindling relationships and taking in the joys of the setting sun rather than staring at a screen saver.

But let’s not over react – social networking does have a place. It’s great to have conversations with daughters who long ago moved overseas, so staying in touch tends to be expensive and intermittent. It’s good to keep in contact with people you might not want to spend an evening with, but happy to keep at arms length through the magic of the internet.

But is it really the indicator of our own self-engineered status. I suspect not. If you want to find out, switch off a few of your ‘must-have’ accounts. Several interesting things will happen. The sun will still shine. The birds will still sing. And people will still try to get in touch with you.

If they don’t, were they worthy of taking up a valuable part of your day in the first place?

Now, that’s self-importance!


Posted by Simon Dover