When did face to face become wall to wall?

A new tool on facebook allows you to view a page specifically dedicated to your social interactions with any one of your friends, like 'You and Sam '. You can see comments you have written on each others walls, events you have both attended and photos you are both tagged in. This page is basically a history of your friendship.

But the truth is this isn't always a real friendship is it?

Social networking sites allow us to mingle with others in an online community much like we would at a party. Except all of this is carried out through words typed into the keyboard of a computer. No handshakes. No eye contact. No real physical interaction at all.

After watching 'The Social Network' I really started to think about how we, as a generation, are extraordinarily reliant on technology and the internet to carry out our lives. The number of 'friends' we have on facebook is more often than not taken as a genuine indicator of how popular we may be; regardless of the fact that a high proportion of those friends are casual acquaintances or people added after a chance encounter on a night out. If you are brutally honest, how many of these so called 'friends' do you actually speak to or meet up with on a regular basis?

When I left university in July I had around 450 'friends'.

I probably speak to about 30 at most. 10 of whom are best friends. 5 of whom also live in London. 2 of whom I live with.

The remaining 400 or so 'friends' are really just there to make me look like I'm a social person.

A card I saw in Scribbler summed up this strange phenomenon perfectly:

'HAPPY BIRTHDAY (FACEBOOK) FRIEND'

As more of our relationships continue to be formed, fostered and ended online we run the risk of losing the personal touch completely. In the last few weeks I have made the, now seemingly redundant, attempt to conduct business over the telephone.

Almost every one of these conversations has ended abruptly with the recipient asking me to just email them the details of my request instead.

Apparently the phone call is now as extinct as the Nokia 5110 it was once made on. No-one wants to talk face to face (or voice to voice) anymore. I can have arguments with someone via Twitter. I can gossip with friends on ichat. I can joke with mates on skype. I can flirt with men via match.com (not that I've actually done this, but I could).

Despite the fact that I write an internet blog and have both Facebook and Twitter (and unashamedly check both accounts at least five times a day) I still sometimes feel like staging a revolution. It's nice to revert back to the days before everything was conducted through an electronic device. It's comforting and nostalgic.

After using some amazing samples on a recent shoot I hand wrote 'Thank You' notes.
I got a shocked but heartfelt thank you back.

Via email.