When my grandfather, Roland Petit, was 9 years old, in the days before automatic pinsetters, his job was to reset the candlepins at the end of the bowling alley. The Pastime Lanes were in Biddeford across from the mill at the corner of Emery and Main streets. His manager, Billy Manning, once told my great-uncle that my grandfather was “the best pinsetter he’d ever known: Fast, strong, unafraid.”

He held the job through high school to support his family and it helped ready Pepere for his later years as a Marine in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Shortly before joining the Marines, he met my future memere, Therese Dallaire, at The Puritan Tea Room in Biddeford, now the Happy Dragon.

They met outside where my grandmother was pretending to smoke an unlit cigarette to look more elegant, like movie actresses, she’d say. My grandfather, intrigued, fell for her ”“ hook, line and sinker. They were married 60 years, during which they built their lives around family, work and friends. For all their lives, they hosted holiday parties at home and their beloved camp, where card games played by all the generations at the table were a favorite recreation. Just as big a pasttime was bowling. They loved bowling and belonged in many leagues ”“ men’s, women’s and kids.

Nowadays, things have changed. I rarely hear about friends and family meeting in social settings by chance, or who play cards or bowl together with other couples. More often they’re playing online poker, online dating, updating an online status or “liking” things on Facebook. These changes, many brought on by social networking and numerous technology advances, are causing what I consider a social breakdown in relationships and community.

While the Pastime Lanes are long closed, bowling as an individual sport is on the rise, but league bowling is way down, says Claire Dube, manager of Vacationland Bowling in Saco. Even more telling of social breakdown: People bowling alone against other peoples’ past scores. Such changes might seem minor, but when you consider that there was once a barber shop in Old Orchard Beach with a bowling lane for customers while they waited for a haircut, it shows how important simple activities like bowling were in building community cohesion.

Today, instead of offering bowling alleys, businesses join social networking sites out of necessity to stay current; email and Facebook allow people to book reservations, plan parties and work with advertisers online, which is good for business ”“ but not so much for direct, personal contact.

While I agree social networking can be a positive tool, and I confess to enjoying aspects of it myself, I wonder if it’s always good for society. I imagine we’ll find a balance. Says Vacationland’s Dube, “People will embrace bowling and other recreational activities even more in the future. They will eventually revolt against social networking and start doing recreational things together again.”

I hope so.

Every day on Facebook, I see stories shared by people I haven’t seen in 20 years. I know what they’re having for dinner, when their child loses a tooth, whose spouse had an affair and whose loved ones have died. Yet, when I see many of these people “offline,” in person, rarely do we say hello. It’s unclear what so many of us are afraid of. Is it that we don’t want to get into long-winded discussions in person? Or that we’ll be seen for who we really are without the security of our online presence that we can control? After all, online we’re able to cater to our audience ”“ post pictures and stories we choose for people to see and delete parts of our lives we don’t like.

There are positive aspects of social networking ”“ it’s convenient, information reaches many people at one time, and various networking tools are free. Still, though, I think back to my grandparents’ courtship and how they spent time with family and friends. Burying their noses in a computer screen wasn’t an option, and texting and friend requests, while not an option yet, wouldn’t have impressed them.

They don’t really impress me, either.

— Nicole Petit holds a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in American and New England studies. Petit has spent the past 10 years working for nonprofit groups that deal primarily with disabilities and child welfare. She is originally from Portland, but has family ties to Biddeford/Saco.