Face to face is dead - long live Facebook?

I was on Facebook recently and I saw a message trail which made me look twice.  Someone had posted an RIP for someone I knew.  As I looked, his sister had posted a comment, also his girlfriend and a number of his friends.  Strangely enough, it wasn’t that he had died that shocked me – although that was shocking enough.  It was the messages.

It’s difficult to find anything to say about death which in the light of mourning, isn’t trite or repetitive. But on Facebook, the messages acquired a new shallow quality that I found repulsive. 

I’ve no idea why messages about the death of a friend or relative should be different from those about the birth of a new baby.  After all, it’s a fast, easy to read, easy to write, update about something that has happened.  But nevertheless I found myself thinking how crass it was.

The death of someone you know is always shocking, expected or not. 

But death, thrust into Facebook posts of breakfast, travel plans, greetings to friends and party photographs, seems indecent in its starkness, as incongruous as someone shouting at prayers.

To my surprise, I find that lots of organisations appear to announce the deaths of employees via email, with noticeboards for people to write their thoughts and condolences.  In a large organisation, this might be rapid, expedient and – by giving employees an opportunity to express their feelings – humane.   HR and internal communication professionals believe that it helps for people to be able to post their thoughts, and that the family find it comforting.

Myself, I’m still not convinced that Facebook is the right place to announce a death.

Death brings us face to face (pardon the pun) with the inevitable. And facing our ultimate end doesn’t require a computer screen and type – it requires a soft voice and a warm, human hand.  It requires space and silence – but with company to reassure.  And a piece of electronics hasn’t yet been invented than can pass a tissue or give a hug. 

I worry that while social media was once heralded as something that could help shy and awkward teenagers connect with other teens, to help then gain confidence, it’s now had the effect of making face to face contact a highly risky thing.  While digital communication is as immediate as face to face – it’s also relatively anonymous. 

After all, face to face you don’t have time to think before making a response (as you do on Facebook) and your tone, face and body send messages as well as what you say.   But people KNOW you – you’re there in front of them.  If they don’t like what you say, they can punch you on the nose. If they like it, they can kiss you. Or something in between.  The response from Facebook is much more distant – they can unfollow you, even if they don’t want to make a response.  Or the argument is carried out online, potentially no less hurtful or vicious – just less immediate, less THERE.

I can see distance creeping in to relationships, even the closest ones.  I see relationships between people in the same house being conducted online, in the full view of friends and family, where instead of banging out their frustrations on a keyboard, they would be better served – as would their children – talking to one another. 

This is also played out in the workplace, where email is so much more prevalent for business communication than, say, picking up the phone or even walking to the other side of the office.

This is a little way from announcing that someone has died over the internet – but stems from the same issue, I think.  We’re forgetting how to communicate with one another, face to face.

I showed this blog to my partner – she pointed out the irony of using a blog to say this.  This irony is not lost on me….