Everyone’s favorite wannabe linguist, William Safire, recently wrote in The New York Times Magazine about retronyms, words that are created due to a new world development.

For example, “acoustic guitar” describes what was simply called a guitar before the electric version hit the scene. There’s also “analog watch,” which refers to the good old-fashioned, two-handed version that was long-ago upstaged by the sleeker digital kind.

And so now if I may (and this is my column, so yes, I most definitely may), I’d like to humbly suggest another retronym for the list: “real life.” Although this probably isn’t strictly true, or even true at all, I would nevertheless posit that this ubiquitous little phrase emerged out of a most modern and quite specific need: to distinguish boring, old-fashioned physical existence from our infinitely more enthralling lives on Facebook.

Some of you may object to this characterization, and indeed, may even squirm at the suggestion that you have an Internet life at all. After all, online socializing is for people who can’t quite handle physical world socializing, and that’s certainly not you, gracious and attractive reader.

Still, even the most socially competent among us tend to enjoy photo-documenting our social successes, so that those poor souls who are less gifted might at least witness our revelry. Facebook turns out to be the perfect venue for such showcasing. And in the midst of fastidious tagging, commenting, and status updating (“Caitlin is completely exhausted from a more awesome weekend than you’ll ever have”), who can help but indulge in the occasional poke or six? Thus the Facebook life begins.

Old people who write about culture for reputable newspapers and magazines often grumble about our generation’s obsession with Facebook and the like. They claim it breeds narcissism, societal disengagement, and some kind of soullessness. Crazy people, who write conspiracy theory pamphlets and kill half a rain forest to litter college campuses with their propaganda, also preach the evils of the ‘book.

One such pamphlet, sprinkled around campus last week, was entitled, “Is the Devil in Your Laptop?” In an article consisting mostly of barely coherent ad hominem attacks against people like Bill Gates, we read, “Have you been to the zoo and looked at the animals in the cages? [Me: Oh, you mean the San Francisco Zoo? Yeah, those little koalas are so cute!] Facebook is worse. [Me: Oh, I think I misunderstood.] The people in Facebook must give up their souls to get in the cage. Humanity is not allowed in the ‘social graph,’ only information. [Me: Do koalas have souls?]”

Sorry, Mr. Crazy Guy, but you give away your utter cluelessness by your improper preposition usage! Obviously, the people are “on” Facebook, not “in” Facebook. What a silly, amateur mistake. And I apologize, but I simply cannot bestow any persuasive power to someone who has clearly neither been to the zoo nor on Facebook.

Anyway, I’ll leave the soul question for another day, but let me now address the narcissism and societal disengagement concerns of respectable journalists.

First, is there narcissism? Yes, duh! Like that eternally distracting reflecting pool of Greek lore, the Facebook profile can become an abyss of self-love that consumes one entirely. However, the majority of us do realize this, and even the most enthusiastic exhibitionists are generally kept in check because they, too, are still keener on stalking the profiles of others than in primping their own.

This brings me to my second point: societal disengagement. If we are flexible about what the word “society” means, I’d argue that most Facebookers are, in fact, quite engaged! Facebook purports to be a social networking site, and coincidentally enough, a social network seems to bear close resemblance to the referent of that elusive abstract noun, society. Just like the physical members of real life society, we online young’ns are interested in discovering who drunkenly disrobed at which party and who undeservedly landed which swanky new job, and we’d prefer the evidence complete with photos and links. Facebook is an incredibly efficient machine for such discoveries.

But believe it or not, we care about other stuff too, like politics, global warming, religion, technology, and just about every other issue that interests the inhabitants of the real world. Facebook can serve as an excellent platform for exchange of ideas about these matters as well, especially amongst like-minded (or civilly disagreeing) individuals who are geographically restricted from real life discussion. It’s also just a convenient way to keep up with long distance friends whom we miss dearly (tear).

In the end, more than a soul-sucking cage or a shrine for self-adulation, Facebook is just an open infrastructure for information that we can treat as we wish. While a minority treat it as a repository for valuable private data and incriminating photographs, this behavior is a glitch in human nature, not in Facebook. For the rest of us, it’s an effective and modern means for well-organized, multi-media communication that, yes, also happens to foster healthy addiction.