Pre-coffee pondering1: I thought Facebook was supposed to be a social media? That it should actively encourage people to interact with one another. Instead, empirical evidence suggests that it is more of an acknowledgement tool.
People post something and then others ‘like’ or ” 🙂 ” their words. This is not necessarily a bad thing, being acknowledged as having said something is also important. But it, I think, misses at least some of the point of social media, and Facebook in particular.
And all of this was brought on by seeing people (myself included) ask questions on their wall – and have people ‘like’ the comment and say nothing. 
Or, in response to said question, people smiley-face and/or *HUG*!
I’m equally guilty of this. I think, or rather, it often is for me, a way to say “ooh, I hear you and Imma answer you, but cute kittens/puppies are the greatest thing ever!”
Anyway, I didn’t have a solution or anything. I was just drinking my coffee while reading FB and happened to notice a thing.
1 – Under-caffeination is a serious affliction. Won’t you please help?
The Process 
Interesting. A fair number of my grad school classmates – and a bunch of my family members, too, come to think of it – have a sort of imperious and sneery regard for Facebook. Partly because, as you’ve written, it doesn’t really connect people so much as it makes friends’ and acquaintances’ curated life-narratives one-click accessible. Which is actually kind of cool, in my opinion. And it makes me wonder if these sorts of fora are re-defining what we mean by ‘network’ and ‘connection’ – both hard things to consider without value judgements. It makes me wonder if redefining existing grammars is adequate to matching shifting signs to current technology, or if we’ll need to come up with new words and new word-combinations for emerging re-alignments in human relationships…. Thanks for making me wonder. 🙂
I like FB, but it frustrates me to no end when I post a question and I get ” 😀 ” instead of, you know, an actual response.
Even a sort of run on one like that last sentence.
🙂
I think that connection has most definitely changed in the last few years. All I need for proof is watching how my daughter interacts with her peers when they are actually *right there*. She speaks in meme, Doge, and YouTube. Her facial expressions are Trolololol and emoticons* It is fascinating from a linguist point of view.
* – although, to be fair, the :3 one she makes is awfully darn cute.