A new "social life"

How many times have you heard from people that you have no social life whatsoever? How many times have you told people that you have no "social life"? If you are reading random blogs like these then I am guessing a lot ;).

Let's reassess the definition of this so called "social life". what does it mean to have social a life?
Correct me if I am wrong, but from I have heard from people all my life, it means having a social presence, meeting new people and keeping in touch with the old ones. Hang out with your buddies. Going out and interacting with public as much as possible. Basically, the one thing that remains common in all conventional methods of being social is that you have to leave the house or invite others to your house. Why do i bother with the definition u may ask? Because according to me its interpretation needs serious adjustment in this increasing digital world.

Now lets take a common example like facebook and gtalk. We keep in touch with our friends both old and new all the time. With constant status updates people now know more about their friends at any moment in the day than they previously new through phones or even meeting in classes. You are in better touch with your cousins in other cities. heck you make friends half way around the world and talk to them. I will reference another of my favourite shows "The big bang theory". They always make geek jokes, with the lead talking about having 500 facebook friends so he has nothing to worry about in that department ;) . I know its not that big a deal to have 500 friends as he thinks but it isnt insignificant either. If you have a personnel relationship with most of the people in your facebook friend list, enough for you guys to laugh and tease each other about, in my book that accounts for quite a social person. If you look at it you can do most interactions better and most frequently than you used too. So what makes you a geek and not a socialite. Is the gap between the digital and real world the only reason for this distinction?? In this increasingly changing world is it a long strech to call the facebook network your very own society?

Personally, I could easily compare a facebook network to a classroom we used to attend and some of us still do. The players are the same. the rules are the same (you like some you ignore some ), even the behaviour is same (the attention seekers still try seeking attention, the ones to talk less still type a lot less, the hyper active ones still comment more than they need too, you even make fun of certain people online with your friends,just like with groups in a class room.). Only thing that changes is the environment. Should the environment alone count for everything??

Maybe my 10,000+ hours of online existence has skewed my view or maybe people still haven't realised how things have changed so quickly?? tell me what you think.