Facebook, Friend or Foe What impact does Facebook have on our relationships? Patricia Fleming Com /220 March 28, 2012 Matt Turner

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein

Because of their growth and popularity social networking sites have in many ways, become a cultural phenomenal that has inched their ways into every facet of our lives, threatening to change the way in which we communicate both on and off line. If you are not convinced, take a look at what is going on the next time you visit your favorite restaurant. Look around at the other patrons; chances are the majority of them have a cell phone or some sort of mobile device lying next to their dinner plates. Instead of engaging in meaningful dialogue, they are sitting in a trance awaiting some sort of notification, tagging themselves in photographs, or “checking in” at the very restaurant you are sitting in; all the while socially “checking out”. Gone are conversations that used to contain the familiar catch phrase “how was your day?”, now if someone wants to know how a person’s day has gone, all they have to do is log onto Facebook and read about it. If that is not enough, consider some of the new words being added to our dictionaries. According to The Huffington Post (2011), words like “sexting”, “retweet”, and “cyberbully” have been added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, these words; which were once non existent five to ten years ago, are now part of our normal every day vocabulary. Universities including The University of Phoenix, snack foods like Pringles, major corporations like Coca-Cola and even local municipalities like The City of Philadelphia have jumped on the social media bandwagon and have all extended a personal invitation for everyone to “like us” on Facebook. As