Social networking a step forward or a step back?

There was no gay scene in India until the internet. Countless people hung in the empty void of loneliness, the physical barriers to meeting full of threat, shame and humiliation. No longer.

Technology now makes essential human connections in a world full of prejudice, barriers and the sheer scale of distance possible.

According to the marketing firm Alloy, 96% of people aged 11-21 currently use social networks. Young people now keep contact with each other to a far greater degree. They don't lose their friends like we used to. Keeping in touch is not something you do when you make the effort, it’s now the very stuff of friendship. Facebook and Myspace and the other web spaces give unimaginable personal expression to countless people. Access to friendships and communities is extended far beyond the limitations of distance, class, race or family pressure.  It's not called Myspace by accident. Social networking online gives you control.

Yale librarian Rutherford Rogers said "We're drowning in information and starving for knowledge." It’s true the net is full of rubbish, but we are learning quickly who to trust and who not to. Our filters are becoming more acute, our antennae are sharpened as we learn to sift through the waves of information. We are better informed than we ever were. Think about healthcare. Patients can find each other. No longer at the mercy of doctors, social networking gives us the chance to take control of our health with the help and support of other sufferers whom we would simply never have met.

Social networking is essentially democratic - look at the US Presidential elections.  Digg.com, among many other sites, is fast becoming a major source of information for people who previously felt disenfranchised from politics. The candidates cannot hide. What they say and what they've done is all there to be read and discussed in online groups. We are recreating the village.

And those who wish to speak to us, whether to get us to vote for them or open our wallets to buy what they have to offer have to speak to us personally. They cannot con us one by one, because we now have a 'we' we never had before. You cannot fool all of the people all of the time, as Lincoln famously said. You certainly can't because now we can talk to each other.

We are extending our human and social skills, personalizing our world. Social networking is diverting the web from its early anonymity in a truly human way by giving us the chance to show ourselves, share ourselves with others. You get nothing back on Facebook unless you reveal something of your self. You cannot remain quiet. Even shy people can venture out.

Currently barely one fifth of people round the world have access to the internet. But 75% of the world's population lives within reach of a mobile network. Most people's first experience of the internet will be via their phones. The potential of this for linking people fighting for human rights in China or enabling nomads in Africa to find the best price for their goods in nearby markets or just for you and me to meet the man or woman of their life was previously unimaginable. In 1959 the first picture of Earth from space was taken by the U.S. satellite Explorer VI. We saw our planet. On line social networks mean that we can finally join hands and hold it in our palm.

But...

We have no idea of the impact of the internet.

The 15th century gave us the printing press and the written word was liberated and eventually the poor began to read. The 19th century telegraph gave birth to the innovation that became the telephone and across continents the spoken word was liberated from the restrictions of space. Now the internet makes possible links one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many.

96% of people aged 11-21 currently use social networks. The next generation is online. But this technological step forward is a social step back. People con themselves that they develop "relationships" online. But they don't. Online we develop only partial communication. On line we lie, we cheat and we dissemble. We know in the extreme cases where paedophiles have lured the young into dangerous sexual contact, where women and men have been conned by the people they thought were going to be the love of their lives that the internet is a conspiracy of the foolish and the malign.

We are retreating from the real social spaces into an individualized world where we interact only partially. It is significant surely that at every point technology removes us from each other we then seek to expand our authentic social contact elsewhere. With the prevalence and ease of the download now, and the act of buying a record in a shop were there are other people having become history, the live gig is coming into its own again. The UK market in live gigs is booming, according to Mintel, to the tune of £743m a year.

Social networking is a misnomer. Networking online is anything but social. It is meaningless till you actually meet someone. "

Which side of the argument do you fall on?  Let us know