Digital Tyranny

Facebook. MySpace. Twitter. E-mail. Text messaging.

All of these are ways to communicate with one another without ever meeting face to face. Between pocket-sized laptops and shiny, multicolored cell phones, people can have whole relationships without ever being in the same room.

Uh, really?

Where is the fun in that?

I have to admit: I’m guilty of a Facebook addiction and my Blackberry is always in my pocket, but I still secretly long for a time I never knew. A time when you actually had to hear my voice to have a conversation with me. A time when people wrote letters to keep in touch. A time when getting to know someone didn’t mean stalking their Facebook page.

I’m guilty of it. You’re guilty of it. We all are. It’s more convenient to shoot a quick e-mail or text instead of taking the time to place a two-minute phone call to deliver the same information.

It’s more convenient to read everything listed under the info tab on someone’s Facebook or MySpace page than to work up the courage to ask him or her about himself or herself.

Last week, a friend of mine met a new guy in one of her classes and couldn’t remember his name. All she knew was which class of hers they shared. Instead of simply asking him his name, she went to her Blackboard page, found the roster from that particular class and looked up every guy on the list on Facebook.

Her plan failed — he’s one of the few students at Tulane without a Facebook page — but the fact that she had the option to try and learn his name in this crazy, roundabout way just blows my mind.

If Mr. Elusive did have a Facebook page, she would have been successful. She could have learned his name, age, birthday and favorite movie in two or three clicks of a mouse.

The things we can find out about others online are a little scary. Is nothing sacred anymore?

I am just as dependant on my cell phone and laptop as the next person, and I know as well as you do that the old days are over, but I have a proposition for you: Make a new friend today.

Learn his or her name. Learn something interesting about him or her. Get his or her number, but don’t text him or her right away.

Don’t look him or her up on Facebook when you get home. Call him or her tomorrow. Get together. Learn about each other the way we did before social networking became the only way to communicate.

I know it sounds ridiculous. I know it sounds trite. Who cares that technology has taken over? Who cares if we send more texts and e-mails than we speak words out loud in one day?

Does it really make a difference the way we get to know someone, whether it’s the old fashioned way or the new, tech-savvy way?

I honestly don’t know. It may, or it may not. But it never hurts to find out.

Judith Chatto is a freshman in Newcomb-Tulane College. She can be reached for comment at jchatto@tulane.edu.