Social Skills NOT Stalker Skills

I wrote this my senior year of college, but I feel it still holds true today...

College students have found a new way to occupy their time and it does not consist of drinking or partying. Rather, it involves hours upon hours of sitting in front of a computer. No, these students are not studying. Well, actually they are studying each other, and with websites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, college students have become enamored with each other’s pseudo-identities.
Facebook prides itself on being “a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” However, there is limited interaction on this website. Facebook merely plays into our culture’s tendency to live life through the all-encompassing computer. People merely sit in front of their computers, incessantly reading a person’s profile which consists of really profound information such as: interests, favorite music, favorite T.V. shows, favorite movies, favorite books, favorite quotes, and last but not least, the “about me” section. I’d say that’s a really great way to get to know a person. What is Facebook turning our social life into?
Facebook allows you to open a window to peeping toms all over the world; a window that in no way allows for social interaction, but rather pseudo-interaction teeming with pseudo-information. Through your profile, you present to others your ideal self, your pseudo-identity. Facebook, while posing as a social interaction tool actually is quite the antithesis. Facebook is rather an isolation utility that transforms the average person into a creepy stalker, lacking social skills. Facebook does nothing to further social skills and has bred a generation of stalkers.
Facebook’s alibi is that it is a social utility, allowing us to get to know others through a convenient medium, the Internet. Yet, Facebook actually is a social hindrance, making its users all the more awkward in social situations. Think about it, people only get to know you on a two-dimensional level, which may or may not be completely feigned. You have created a full blown relationship with someone’s pseudo-identity without ever hearing this person’s voice. It is very hard to switch from a two-dimensional relationship through mediums such as AIM, to an actual live relationship. I would think that Facebook creates awkward tension in social situations, and is a far cry from its celebrated “social utility.”
The "News Feed" feature on Facebook has managed to make Facebook all the more invasive. The "News Feed" feature allows you to track each and every one of your friends’ moves. People get to see intimate things that you really didn’t want people to see. Facebook, through the News Feed feature, has made the once innocuous invitation to view others into a very threatening invasion of your privacy. It acts as your own personal big brother documenting the lives of you and your friends. This News Feed plays into our culture’s desire to acquire the most information, no matter how senseless or impertinent.
Facebook has added the term “lurking” into our everyday vocabulary. There have been times that strangers have approached me on campus and when I ask them how they know my name, which is in itself kind of creepy, they respond that they came across my profile as they were lurking on Facebook. If that’s not awkward I don’t know what is. Where do we draw the line? We need to get up off our desk chairs and actually meet people the old-fashioned way. We need to go out, experience life, strike up conversations with strangers and hone our social skills, not our stalking skills.