Its not everyday you find yourself agreeing with the Archbishop but ....

[oxocube]

I think I do on this. He is basically slating Facebook and the like ...........

'Archbishop Nichols said the sites encouraged young people to put too much emphasis on the number of friends they have rather than on the quality of their relationships.'

Having said that, I love the internet (but don't use Facebook)- tis a fab thing if you are old and boring like me

Without virtual matesi'd have none, at least close by, because of genwral life is shit stuff

Course there's a downside but there are also positives (and I feel sure old Archybish did incl;ude forums such as this in his understanding) andthe Church strugglesenough with relevanceas it is without making itself look even more dinosaur like

Living in a 'foreign country' with a baby, no real ties and very limited babysitting, I am very grateful to Facebook for letting me stay closely in touch with old friends, make a few new ones and 'socialise' in general.

I'm sometimes surprised by how deeply people can communicate online. They're often less guarded but also more able to think about what they want to say than in rl. I met my dh online more than ten years ago!

Can't they do "virtual church" or "Godbook" for those who can't be arsed getting up out of bed on a Sunday morning?... I think the Archbish is missing the potential here!

UQD

Well I do agree that counting how many friends you have is a poor measure. I have a good couple of handfuls of close RL friends some for 25 years or more.

Online, I have a few virtual friends who I lke to chat to and of course like a lot of people here on MN. I would never go on Facebook though as I do not understand what it does or what I would get out of it compared to RL friends plus my internet friends who share common interests. Fact is I just do not want to reveal who I really am online - only to RL friends.

I think it is just a case of an incredibly prescriptive and traditional organization (the catholic church)objecting to new technologies just as it did to such innovations as the printing press, the discovery that the world was not flat, television etc etc. I think as some people have already said there is huge potential for the internet to enrich our lives - it is not the technologies themselves that can be damaging but the way some people choose to harness and use them. Facebook is not the root of all evil it is just another fairly innocuous way of keeping in touch and communicating with others. We have to embrace technological advances, not work agaginst them IMO

What I don't get (not that I have to of course, horses for copurses and all that....) is FB only mates

All my FB friends bar one who slipped through looking like someone else (ooops) are RL mates who I just keep in touch with on there- parents of kids who mioved schools, friends who live back home, old Uni mates.People in any other world i'd lose touch with.

Whereas trawling around randomly inviting people to be your mate- well ????

That's a bit odd isn't it, unless you really have something in common. What surprises me about facebook is it's often the people you don't expect who comment the most on things. I've started really chatting to friends-of-friends for example, when in real life, the mutual friend is always the one to do the talking and get the attention.