Tim McElligott Blog: Social Network Lexicon is unFriendly

Before Facebook, I’ll bet few people thought the word “friend” was a verb. I didn’t. I thought all the talk about friending someone was just another bastardization of the English language. I knew we could befriend someone. And although that word sounds pretentious, it still sounds better and feels more comfortable than friending or unfriending someone.

But there it is, in my Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary from Merriam-Webster in 1989 – when Facebook co-founder Mark Zukerberg was but five years old – listed as a verb.

Friend is a verb. Mom is a friend. Ergo, Mom is a verb?

I’ve been Mommed. We all have, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. I’ve been Dadded, too. But dads aren’t really necessary anymore. Those of us without active or involved dads may simply say we have been Zygoted, or Gameted.
 
As a Chicago Southsider, I should be the last one to criticize anyone’s grammar or word choice, ya’ know? But certain words just grate on you. I had finally begun to accept the new marketing verb, incentivize (although I refuse to use permanentize and credibilize) and at first was glad Sarah Palin was raising “you betcha” to the national stage until she turned out to be not just verbally but mentally challenged. It just seems to me that Facebook hasn’t earned the right yet to disrupt our language.

Besides, nobody likes to say they had to ask someone to be their friend. Friendship is one of those unspoken truths. Where it is true, it is implied. No one need ask. Asking someone to be your friend sounds so desperate. That’s why I only have 57 — most of them related.

And, like 70 percent of parents, I have friended my daughter. Parents don’t realize that 30 percent of their teenage kids desperately want to unfriend their parents – especially their moms – but can’t bring themselves to do it. Hmmm. Maybe one can be unMommed.

Facebook and other social media communities who use the term friend have cheapened it. More than 50 percent of kids have no personal relationship with their online friends and in many cases don’t even know who they are, according to a new AOL survey conducted by The Nielsen Company.

John Ryan, Child Protection Advocate and AOL's head of Online Safety and Security, said predators, whether bullies or sexual offenders, often masquerade as friends. This led AOL to introduce a new product called Safe Social that provides parents a 360 degree view of their child's social networking life.

This is awesome, necessary and technically pretty impressive. But its necessity is the second blow to real childhood friendship. The first was the play date, which is not in my Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary from Merriam-Webster in 1989.