Social But Uncontrollable Facebook
I admit I was drawn to Facebook a little later than most people. I also admit that I am totally fascinated by it and am thoroughly enjoying the ease with which I can connect with my friends and relatives. Facebook is the new fashion and everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. That’s why, this picture below of an overloaded bus reminds me of Facebook.
(http://picasaweb.google.com/genbi5/Banaue#5226555913991170930)
There are some aspects of this Internet phenomenon that make me uncomfortable and I would like to analyze them further.
Firstly, in my opinion, using Facebook can be a time consuming activity. The very structure of Facebook, with its numerous attractive features like unlimited picture, video uploading, personal status updating, constant new wall messaging and the capability to join millions of groups and their interesting activities, can entangle the user to an extent where they have little power to control their usage of time. In one of our course readings, The Internet in Everyday Life, Wellman and Hogan (2004) say that the “internet’s technical characteristics provide a possible means of organizing relationships with other people, not a blueprint of how the action will or should take place.” So, keeping in mind what this article says, since Facebook is an application of the Internet, it is up to the users to dictate the level and method in which they use it for communicating with others. This is, however, not easy for Facebook users because they get in the habit of perpetually wondering if there is an update on their wall, if a friend of a friend uploaded some exciting pictures, or if a long lost friend invited them to join their friends’ list. Facebook is downright addictive. Obviously, true to what Wellman and Hogan later point out in their article, “the extra communication and information seeking of internet users affect available time, as the increased use of the internet is correlated with decreased time at housework, television and time spent in person with family members.”
Secondly, people seem to be getting stuck on Facebook because of its apparent “all-are-welcome” sociable and open nature. Users may find themselves part of a list of hundreds of friends or acquaintances making them believe that they are actually part of a community. Let’s consider a quote in the article “Using Web 2.0 for learning in the community” by Robin Mason and Frank (2007): “…the social web-or Web 2.0…is a place for networking, community building and sharing collective experience…” Advocates of Facebook may claim that the words “collective experience” and “community building” describe their experience. I am doubtful about how much value this “community building” concept holds for Facebook when communication there is confined to a small messaging space that may limit users from fully expressing themselves. It seems that Facebook is not meant for an in-depth exchange of ideas or feelings.
Furthermore, the “collective experience” mentioned in the above article becomes a bit too literal and inconvenient in Facebook when all conversations between two people are also visible to hundreds of other people on the friends list. Onlookers also have the capability to intervene and add their comments to the conversations. It is as if all conversations take place via a loudspeaker. I remember an incident when I was chatting with my sister about our family and an acquaintance intervened and bombarded my Facebook wall with comments on our discussion. The situation became embarrassing for all three of us. Obviously, the “collective experience” mentioned in the above article can become pretty uncontrollable in Facebook.
So, let’s ponder over the true virtues or disadvantages of this social networking tool. Surely, if we understand it more, we can use it to our greatest advantage. To help us understand various other aspects of social networking, here are links to two interesting articles: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880936 ,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5488683/.
In the meantime, I’ll just check if someone wrote on my Facebook wall…!
-Nilofar
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