Are the social networks really social gathering?

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What I see around me is people spending(wasting) all their free time on social networks like facebook and twitter and postponing their meetings with their friends and relatives in real life. I see a lot of people being addicted to social networks - they get nervous if they don't check what is going on with their profile on the social network; they eat while browsing their profile; when going on-line in the morning the first thing they do is checking their profile and even sometimes they sleep less just cause they spend more and more time browsing their or someone else's profile. Tell me - don't you think this is a strong kind of addiction? I've observed that it is more addictive to girls because of their vanity - they spend half of their time editing, uploading and browsing their pictures or checking who's watching their pictures at specific moment or compare their pictures with those that other girls have and when they are occasionally free they make pictures themselves to upload them afterward. On-line friendships are something fake and easier - one can lie and cheat as far as he/she wants and there is no face expression you can judge upon and no real life situations... So my question is do you think that social networks are really that social and help people gather more often or just on the contrary?