Social networking sites are now all the rage.  MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and Twitter now dominate the Internet as much as Google and YouTube.  The fascinate people and consume their time like nothing else has ever done before.  People on average spend more time on these sites than they do in front of the television (which I call, as Doctor Who so brilliantly put it, The Idiot’s Lantern).

I understand the reasons behind Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace.  For those people who do not wish to spend time learning web page design, or do not wish to pay for their own site, it gives them an instant quick and ready presence on the Internet to interact with others.  Sharing photos, video, and information about yourself is addictive.  It’s an ego tweak for some and a way to keep people informed for others.

Yet, I ask myself “How much is too much?”  High school students spend so much time on Facebook during their classes that they do not get anything done.  They will drop the class if they cannot access Facebook.  People at work are the same.  They are addicted to the site.  They do not have the time to get their work done, but somehow have the time to update their Facebook status hourly. 

Reuters estimates that Facebook costs Australian companies upwards of $4.5 billion dollars a year.  In the United Kingdom, the figure is estimated to be $275 million dollars per day.  I.T. security firm Global Secure Systems surveyed 1,000 school kids aged 13 to 17 in London, England.  52% of kids surveyed used classroom time to surf social networking sites, and 50% of these teenagers said they spent over thirty minutes a day browsing them.  The average user spends 20 minutes a day logged into Facebook, and two thirds of all users login at least once a day.

That’s a lot of time.

Perhaps we are witnessing a social revolution of sorts.  An offline change to an online presence.  As for me personally, I login to Facebook perhaps every other day and generally do not spend more than a couple of minutes there.  Admittedly, it is a convenient method to keep up to date with the people around you.  As for Twitter, I do have an account, though I have no use for it at the moment.

Thinking through some more, I do see one benefit of sites such as Twitter, in that they allow people in oppressed nations such as North Korea, Iran, and China to post real time updates of happenings that their respective governments may wish to suppress.  A new method of global communication that every government is powerless to stop.