The Facebook Sonnet: Decreases Face-to-Face Communication

“The Facebook Sonnet” by Sherman Alexie brings up ideas and controversy over social media because it decreases face-to-face communication. Though Facebook allows people to contact old and new friends, it renders away from the traditional social interaction. Online, people are easily connected by one simple click. From liking one’s status to posting multiple pictures, Facebook demands so much attention that it’s easy for users to get attach. They get caught up in all the online aspect of their lives that they fail to appreciate real life relationships and experiences. Within Alexie’s diction and tone, “The Facebook Sonnet” belittles the social media website by showing how society are either focused on their image or stuck in the past to even live in the present.
Alexie’s use of words and tone throughout the poem shows his feelings toward Facebook in a negative way. First, Alexie grabs the readers’ attention by opening the poem up with the word “welcome.” His sarcastic tone is already being shown in the beginning of lines 1-3, “Welcome to the endless high-school/ Reunion. Welcome to past friends/ And lovers, however kind or cruel.” His opinion toward Facebook friends is that most users don’t consider the majority of their friends on Facebook their actual friend in reality. On Facebook or any other social media website, users may have hundreds of people they consider as their friends. However, in real life, most of the time that number lies in the single digit.
Alexie’s tone changes from sarcastic to serious as he talks about more stern ideas like religion. Though a specific form of religion is never stated, the assumption that God is present is mentioned in the poem. Lines 9-13 reads “... Let fame/ And shame intertwine. Let one...

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...tantly shown throughout the poem like “friends” and “unmend,” “fame” and “domain,” “pretend” and “extend,” and “same” and “games.” These slant rhymes that Alexie uses show that he doesn’t respect Facebook enough to make the words rhyme. Alexie ends the poem with the lines reading “Let’s sign up, sign in, and confess/ Here at the alter of loneliness.” He has constantly shown through his downgraded words in the poem that this social media website hurts our society as a whole. Alexie believes that Facebook is a shallow way of communicating with friends because it allows them to hide behind a computer screen.
He tries to intensify the point that one can be as popular as one wants on a social network, but it’s the face-to-face communication that truly matters in life. For real relationships to work, people must appreciate with what they do have and live in the present.