Are social networking sites destroying society?

In an interview, Sherry Turkle discusses the affects technology has had on teenagers and college students as she laid out in her latest book, Alone Together. Turkle talks about the change in our generation for how we approach technonlogy, for example the fact that we would rather text than talk and that we find talking, even on the telephone, to be too personal. Additional to this idea, Turkle brings up the notion that being online on social networking sites, such as Facebook, removes you from sociability offline. My initial reaction was that I agreed with this; I think that when you only communicate through technology you do lose some sort of closeness and affinity that you would gain from having a conversation face-to-face with someone, as you can pick up on their personality characteristics through the exchange. Furthermore, in a response to an article about Mark Zuckerburg being named Time's Person of the Year, the blogger states that communicating through technology is actually "characteristic of anti-social behavior" and that people lose relatability with one another through it.

However, a comment was left on this blog stating that it's possible "that people once said the same thing about the telephone". This reminds me of a discussion early on in the semester about the promise of the technological fix. Although it is a little backwards, in that in this situation the new technology is viewed negatively rather than having the ability to bring about change, I think the concept still applies. Here is a new technological fascination that has certain connotations and promises for some, such as Facebook taking away sociability for young people, however these social networking also have elevated communication to a level that was probably never imagined when the telephone was new. After thinking about these opposing ideas, I think that although there is evidence in Turkle's and the blogger's claims, social networking sites will never reach a point where they completely take away the social foundations of our society because we will not allow them to go that far.