In the last week I’ve had requests from 10 people to be my friend. The requests come from everywhere: LinkedIn, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo! Messenger, Twitter, Ning, OurStory, and Jubii. (Do you ever wonder why social networks feel obliged to have the least memorable names?) Just today I spent about half an hour going through invitations and trying to figure out how I even knew these people. Or if I even knew these people.

Are there differences amongst this handful of sites? Yes, but they’re sometimes subtle.

• LinkedIn is a site I use regularly to keep in touch with business colleagues.
• Flickr is a photo sharing site.
• Facebook keeps you in touch with friends in specific networks like your school.
• MySpace keeps in you in touch with just about anyone and everyone.
• Yahoo! Messenger is one of many instant messengers.
• Twitter is new and is meant to document what you do every day, minute by minute if you choose, and then share it with friends.
• Ning is a social network that lets you quickly create your own social network.
• OurStory is meant to document your life using multimedia tools and then share the results with friends.
• Jubii is meant to be the kitchen sink of social networking with blogging, chatting, email, and storage tools to name a few.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of social networking hotspots. Think of them like neighborhood candy stores (or bars). They’re popping up everywhere, each looking for clientele.

Social networking mania has gone mainstream. We now collect friends in our networks the way kids collect Barbies, Pogs, or Yu-gi-oh cards. Quantity trumps quality.

When I speak to student groups about Internet safety, I send a short survey that asks them to inventory their own daily Internet use. One of the questions is how much time they spend IMing or otherwise socially keeping in touch each day. The majority of students answer somewhere between an hour or two, but a significant percent (about 20) claim they’re chatting and conversing at least four hours a day. Considering it’s a seven-hour school day, with homework, dinner, and after-school commitments, it’s highly likely that they’re chatting while doing homework. I ask them to keep a log of their homework hours and bet them that they can cut their homework time in half if they don’t do it while they’re keeping in touch with friends.

All of this preamble begs the question I thought I’d never have to ask: Has the computer made us too social? Are we spending so much of our time collecting and categorizing friends that we’re forgetting to do something a bit more constructive?

Maybe it’s time for a little bit of anti-social behavior? If you or your kids are spending more time answering email from connection wannabes, documenting your life, or decorating your profiles it may be time to do a little bit of anti-social networking.