Fax machines became popular about the time I served in my first working assignment overseas in the early 1990’s for the U.S. Department of State. My family, friends, and I enthusiastically embraced the ability to communicate without the necessity for waiting on physical mail.

Before I left my last overseas assignment, we delighted in email and cheaper long distance telephone service. Cell phones were coming into popular use. We shopped “online” with our credit cards, eliminating time-consuming orders of clothes and other merchandise by mail and check (though we still had to wait for the packages to arrive in the traditional way).

Social networking appeared after I returned to the U.S., but I’m well aware of its potential to enhance long distance relationships. Instant communication with the whole family? Close friends that you only see every year or so? Marvelous!

Further additions to the electronic menu multiply so fast that spell checkers can’t keep up with them. Texting and blogs allow for instant communication with like-minded individuals. We interact and let the world know our opinions.

I do have one concern. What if our electronic networking becomes a substitute rather than an enhancement of face-to-face interaction? The word “friends” has become corrupted. Facebook and Twitter are often used as tools for advertising rather than sharing.

Anything I write on the “walls” of my “friends” I sift through a filter: How much of my inner self should be broadcast to the world? Communicating the depths of my soul? Maybe not.

Social networking allows us instant interaction with multitudes. Like many blessings, if used wisely, it serves us well. It has the potential to dilute our relationships, however, if it becomes a substitute for the intimacy of face-to-face sharing.