Photo by: Mounia Rotil

Lebanon, always quick to pick up international trends, has caught the social networking sites bug. Here Facebook is by far the most popular choice for people to stay in touch with their old and new friends and colleagues, while many men like to flirt randomly with women via platforms such as hi5. In fact, as a result of their ‘addictive nature’, many companies, banks and institutions have banned access to these sites in a bid to ensure workers focus on their work and don’t hog the company’s bandwidth!

On Facebook there are 187,296 people in Lebanon’s network but this is only the tip of the iceberg as many Lebanese are part of other networks or none, hence this number isn’t indicative of the total amount of Lebanese on Facebook. Neither are the groups created to see how many Lebanese are on Facebook (as many Lebanese haven’t joined them). But there are over 500 groups with the word ‘Lebanon’ and over 500 with the word ‘Lebanese’ in their title. These groups are very diverse, some are political (March 14, March 8 etc.), others raise and express views on social issues (civil marriage, cohabitation…), are business related (employment opportunities, companies, products…), bring together those with common interests (anime fans, stand-up comedy fans…), are devoted to local causes and charities, exclusively target the diaspora (Lebanese expats etc.) and some are even smutty.

The Lebanese are also visible participants in ASmallWorld’s select community of only around 270,000 members, with Lebanon’s network being 2,120 strong, which is actually rather impressive considering.