The devolution of social networking into a kind of bizarre connectivity fetish has been garnering a lot of attention in the media lately. Somehow, people have grown more connected and less connected; more outspoken and less insightful. It’s all very confusing and contradictory if not undeniably and utterly true.

Picture this: heads bowed around the table, air laden with the staccato of eager thumbs crushing tiny, plastic buttons. Periodically, someone will look up, cram a forkful of wagon wheel pasta into his mouth, and dive right back into that liquid crystal pool — utterly detached from those around him. How many of you are living this right now?

The social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and so on) have honed in on an innate compulsion so powerful that treatment centers are springing up just about everywhere to assist so-called “internet addicts”. Some optimists have attributed this most recent outburst of sharing, feeling, and TMI to a sort of webby renaissance. After reading pages upon pages of Tumblr posts and Facebook notes to prepare for this article, I’m inclined to believe that we’ve instead stumbled into something far worse. Or at least significantly more pointless:

Our posts — the same ones we sacrifice real human connection for — are completely banal and, simply put, boring.

I should have suspected as much: personally, I’m no longer capable of entering a public library without “checking in” on foursquare, twittering about how odd libraries smell, and then taking frequent microbreaks to candidly upvote pictures of narwhals on social bookmarking site reddit. Sure, I may not be as bad as the girls who turned to Facebook instead of emergency services for help — but that’s not saying much.

Kicking this habit isn’t going to be easy. We might try banning social networking outright — but then I wouldn’t be able to find pictures of other people’s cats doing cute things. Another idea would be to ship Mark Zuckerberg off to prison. Come to think of it, that might work.

In the end, however, pointing fingers will only get you so far. After all, your time is your own personal responsibility — show moderation and self-restraint, and you’ll be golden. Give into every impulse and you’ll be Perez Hilton.

If this seems like a strange perspective to find on a blog associated with a service named SocialKey, well — you’re right: it is strange. At the same time, it’s also a principle that we take very, very seriously; SocialKey has been designed not to absorb your life, but to grow it — a topic we’ll save for a future blog post.

As for this article, I think John Lennon (almost) put it best: “Life is what happens to you while you’re [not tweeting about something stupid].” Guard life’s little moments jealously; don’t trade the opportunity to live for a few dozen snippets of text or a couple sarcastic comments from your friends. It’s just not worth it — unless, of course, you’re trying to launch a business. Then you’re screwed.