I'm addicted to social networking sites.

There. I said it. The first step is admitting you have a problem, right?

It's been years since I joined good old Livejournal and Myspace to stay in touch with out of state friends. At first I cared very little about it and logged on sparingly, if at all. But... then I realized I could find people online that I hadn't spoken to in years. I found my cousins online. I met a man I dated for over a year online. And thus the addiction began to grow.

I think the growth of social networking on the internet is a wonderful and fascinating thing. We can keep in touch with many of our friends at once by a simple text to Twitter, we can find people we haven't seen in decades on Facebook, and we can connect with people across the globe with similar interests on a variety of sites. However, I do believe we're paying for our transition into this crazy online world by giving up a measure of basic human interaction. This doesn't mean I think we're all running around like introverted hermits with no social graces. We have friends, we have professional lives, we still make phone calls and get together for drinks. I think it's more a sense of closeness, a sense of community that we've lost or are losing.

Instead of going to a local bookstore and finding a book group to join, I looked online. Instead of seeking out a knitting group, I went online. Instead of calling my cousins, I'll write on their Facebook walls. I know I'm not alone in this.

This is a bit of nostalgia talking, but does anyone remember what it felt like to get an honest-to-God handwritten letter in the mail? When I was a kid, it was the best feeling in the world.

I hear people wailing about these drawbacks to living online pretty frequently. And really, all I have to say is that nothing is perfect. In gaining the ability to freely talk to and connect with people halfway across the planet at the drop of a hat, we have to sacrifice something.

Well...

This was originally intended to be a post in which I said "hey guys, LOOK LOOK here I am online! Come find me! I looooove online communities!" I guess I got a little carried away. ^_^

I'd love to know what your favorite networking site is, and where I can find you online! And now I'm curious if anyone else feels like they've lost something because they've spent so much time on the internet.

I can be found...

On Blogger (no way, bet you guys didn't know THAT!)


On Facebook

On Myspace

On Twitter

On Playfire

On Shelfari

On deviantART (tragically, it appears that somehow ALL my uploads got removed.... O_o)

On Last.fm

On Ravelry (knit & crochet community, invite only while it's in beta)

On Mog (still working on this one, but it pretty much looks awesome)