I confess that, with my schedule and how different it is from the schedules of my peers, I keep up with the majority of my friends via social networking sites. Facebook, a site primarily geared towards college kids but accepting all ages, is my primary way of staying in touch with many of my high school friends, as many of them headed off to Texas Tech or University of Texas at Austin. Myself, and the handful of friends who went to University of Texas at Dallas, are the only ones who stuck around the area.

Each person's Facebook profile has basic information about him or her in it, including the all-important 'relationship' bar. There, the user can indicate their status, ranging from 'single' to 'its complicated' to 'married,' and, if the user's significant other is also on Facebook, link the pages.

Slowly, I've watched high school friends move from 'single' to 'in a relationship' to 'engaged.' Recently, I received an invitation to a friend's wedding via Facebook. It's a bit surreal. Are these the same people who I sat in class with, talking when the teacher turned his back? Now, they're picking out rings and putting up pictures of significant life events.

I'm not complaining, nor am I jealous. Its just odd to me that, less that five years ago, these same people were angsting about their high school loves, many of which they no longer speak to. They're my age, give or take a year or two, and without the constant contact that I have with closer friends, sometimes it's difficult to think of my high school friends as anything other than high school friends. Physically, they've not changed much in the intervening years - or maybe they just haven't updated their pictures online. Either way, it's sometimes difficult to differentiate who they are now with who they are when I leaned against my locker with them and gossiped about the who was dating who.

Of course, all of this also brings up an interesting commentary on social networking in the Internet age. I get wedding invitations online. Instead of any sort of formal engagement announcement, I can check out the Facebook pages of friends and figure out that they've decided to get married. On the one hand, it makes life easier, and saves trees. It's cheap, and there's no fussy bows or address labels or special paper to deal with. I can understand that. It lacks something, however, that I can't quite put my finger on.

That seems to be the way of things online: it's easier, it's cheaper, it's greener, but it lacks something. Sending an e-mail is less complicated than writing a letter, but it just isn't the same. Sending a text takes less time than picking up the phone and calling, but you miss the voice on the other line. Reading an e-book lacks the soft swish of paper on paper.

One of my myriad New Year's resolutions (some of which I've already forgotten) is to remain in better touch with friends. So far I'm not doing too great, I must confess: I rely far too much on the Internet to tell me when something happens with my friends. As technology increases, so too, it seems does our alienation from real life. Don't get me wrong, I love my Facebook and I love blogs and I grew up with the Internet. There's nothing wrong with any of that. But maybe, at some point, we need to disconnect the cable and come back to real life, a bit. Go for a walk and listen to music. Read a book while curled in a chair. Put the computer away and call up an old friend.

We all have to check our e-mail eventually, but just because you have a computer and a cell phone and doesn't mean you have to plug it in or pick it up.