Bakersfield.com

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    Globalization. We can find out the best place to get Pizza in Venice as easily as downtown Bakersfield. The world has shrunk. Yet, why does it seem our local neighborhoods and communities have actually gotten larger and harder to connect with? Many families express dismay that whole neighborhoods get home from work or school and pull into the garage not to be seen again until the next day when pulling out of the garage to go back to work or school. The busy lives of families with two working parents, multiple kids in school and extracurricular’s, and urban sprawl have caused community and neighborhood relationships to suffer. Some attribute this shallowness to more devious and sinister causes; devious and sinister because of their misleading appearance of innocence and frivolity.  According to a  local pastor, deteriorating family and community relationships can in part, be attributed to social networking websites such as facebook, myspace, and twitter. This critique of social networking has been voiced by many. However, observing the social networking revolution that has occurred, it has become apparent that instead of creating the relational vacuum, it is simply filling it.
    Gone are the days when families sat on the front porch in the twilight, chatting with neighbors about the weather, laundry, politics, or religion while the kids play in front yard. But, are those days really gone? Well, the porch isn‘t gone but it has changed. There is a new  front porch in America, and it can be found on social networking sites like facebook, twitter, and myspace. This is where friends separated by five miles or 500, chat about everything from their piles of laundry to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.  Parents share their kids latest antics and one liners, and you can hear a friends latest frustration and their greatest joy. There has been a great lament in America about the demise of the front porch. But American’s have proven once again their ingenuity, and like it or not America has a new front porch.