Is Social Networking Changing the Way People Grow Up?

It occurred to me a few days ago that social networks could be having a big effect on the way people grow up and move through life. When I was in my early high school years, one of my best friends moved to the Washington, DC area. I went to visit him once, we wrote a few letters, and then lost touch. That's kind of the way these things happened.

When I graduated from high school, I went off to college, met new people, and made some new friends.

After college, I started working, moved to a new town, and - again - met new people, and made new friends.

During these transitions, I also lost touch with some of my family, my earlier friends and co-workers.

It was an evolutionary process - your circle of people changed with your life experiences. Your interests, work and hobbies evolve and with them, the people who share those things would change. Sure, you have your immediate family, and probably one or two really close friends your whole life, but most of the rest would come and go.

Now, everybody you've known since 3rd grade, your cousins who live in Nevada, your mail carrier from two moves ago, and your last two boyfriends all interact with you on a weekly - if not daily - basis.

Is this good? Does staying connected with your past hold you back? Or does having that huge network of "friends" help you advance?

I've always felt one of the important things about graduating from high school and either getting a job or going to college is you get to start over. There's a whole new group of people who don't know you were the class brain or flirt or jock - so you get a chance to do a little makeover of yourself if you want to. Now, your whole past comes schlepping along with you, and when you 'friend' somebody, they can see all your old friends making the same old jokes about the pass you dropped in the playoffs, or how many girlfriends you had in Junior High, or how you bombed the World History test three times. I suppose you could delete your old page and start over, but how would that make your old friends feel, and would the new ones think it kind of odd you only have 7 friends - all of which you added this week?

On the other hand, you have a great resource of people to draw on to help get you through a tough class, deal with a slave-driver boss, and then there's that slob of a house-mate. But does leaning on these old connections hold you back from learning to deal with them yourself?

Do social networks (and unlimited calling time and texting on cell phones) keep you in the past, or help you to get where you want to be?