Brandon Moon

Picture yourself back in your dating years. You meet this cute, fun, attractive girl or boy and start going out. Things are going well for a while, but then they lose interest and break up with you (Sad story, I know, but… keep reading). You call, you try to change his or her mind, but it looks like things aren’t working out. Maybe they stop answering your calls, or they find ways to avoid you. Eventually you learn to accept their decision, and you move on. Contact has been broken. We’ve probably all been through it.

Now flash forward to today. Maybe you’re happily married by now, maybe you’ve got a significant other, maybe not. But for some reason, you can’t resist the temptation to look up your old flame online. You can find all sorts of details on their life, if they’re married or dating someone, where they live, what they do, what they find interesting, who they still associate with, etc. You might even go so far as to send a friend invite on Facebook and try to “rekindle” the friendship, which can lead to trouble.

Why do we do it?

Or maybe a better question is: should we do it?

Twenty or thirty years ago, this wouldn’t have been as big of an issue. In order to “catch up” with this person, you’d either have to actually talk to them, or basically stalk them. There wasn’t a whole lot of middle ground. But nowadays, that person is actively posting status updates and information about themselves on the web, almost asking you to stalk them. It’s way to easy to find out information about someone else—even if you’re not friends with them on Facebook. Some how I’ve become an “active non-participant” in so many of my friend’s lives. I don’t talk to them anymore, either online or in real life, but somehow I know that they just had a baby, his name is so-and-so, he’s 7 lb. 12 oz. with black hair and blue eyes, he was born at X hospital, and on and on. I’ve even seen pictures of him online. Should I really know all this about someone I haven’t spoken to in years?

Maybe it’s time we realized that we need to set some online social boundaries. I really like this article posted by one of my friends. It talks mostly about social etiquette and how to be more careful about what we share. I think we should take it a bit further, and perhaps be a bit more careful about how we browse.

We need to put our online lives at a lower priority than then our non-virtual lives. Call or email your friends and let them know what’s going on in your life before you broadcast it on Facebook. Stay away from the more “serious” online discussions — leave that for in-person communication. If you discover that someone is in a tough situation, reach out to them in real life rather than leaving a half-hearted comment online. Don’t forget that online social media is meant to enrich our existing relationships, not replace them.

Don’t get caught in the “social spiderweb.”