Sometime in the next few weeks, Facebook will officially log its 500 millionth active citizen. If the website were granted terra firma, it would be the world’s third largest country by population, two-thirds bigger than the U.S. More than 1 in 4 people who browse the Internet not only have a Facebook account but have returned to the site within the past 30 days.
Just six years after Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg helped found Facebook in his dorm room as a way for Ivy League students to keep tabs on one another, the company has joined the ranks of the Web’s great superpowers. Microsoft made computers easy for everyone to use. Google helps us search out data. YouTube keeps us entertained. But Facebook has a huge advantage over those other sites: the emotional investment of its users. Facebook makes us smile, shudder, squeeze into photographs so we can see ourselves online later, fret when no one responds to our witty remarks, snicker over who got fat after high school, pause during weddings to update our relationship status to Married or codify a breakup by setting our status back to Single. (I’m glad we can still be friends, Elise.)
Getting to the point where so many of us are comfortable living so much of our life on Facebook represents a tremendous cultural shift, particularly since 28% of the site’s users are older than 34, Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic. Facebook has changed our social DNA, making us more accustomed to openness. But the site is premised on a contradiction: Facebook is rich in intimate opportunities ”” you can celebrate your niece’s first steps there and mourn the death of a close friend ”” but the company is making money because you are, on some level, broadcasting those moments online. The feelings you experience on Facebook are heartfelt; the data you’re providing feeds a bottom line.
I was on Facebook for about six weeks two years ago. Loved it for the first two weeks, felt increasingly weird about it the next two weeks, and spent the last two weeks trying to explain to my horrified friends and neighbors why I was getting off. They acted as if I was going to study algae in Antarctica: they had never heard such a thing! “Get off Facebook? Why would somebody DO this?”
It was nice to reestablish contact with people from high school and seminary, but it was during the 2008 election, and every other person felt the need to blast my inbox with misinformation (from both sides, to be sure). I was bombarded with requests to help grow cyber-plants to show my solidarity with the global warming crowd, which irritated me greatly since I’m pretty cynical on the subject. I was invited to take innumerable quizzes to establish, once and for all, just what kind of lover I really am. I declined the offer.
I felt pressured to accept as ‘friends’ people with whom I had a passing acquaintance twenty years ago. These were mostly people who didn’t give me the time of day in high school and college, but who suddenly wanted to collect me on Facebook. At first, I thought they were establishing some sort of contact, and welcomed the opportunity. But they weren’t interested in ‘being friends,’ they were interested in ‘having friends.’ I felt like a notch in a bedpost. I unfriended most of them, because I wasn’t interested in reestablishing the same school-days dynamic that had made my life hellish back then.
In the end, it’s a huge attention hole. That first two weeks, I found myself spending 2-3 hours a day on there, just trying to manage the account. The second two weeks, I realized I could better spend that time praying, reading, or listening to music–things that actually feed the soul–and I limited myself to an hour a day. But even that got to be too much. Eventually, I closed the account–but not before I received a barrage of emails from Facebook asking me why I wanted to do this, and assuring me I could come back when I came to my senses. I’m happy to say that I haven’t.
Exactly, Anglicanum. I was a member long enough to realize that I could spend my life on Facebook, as some folk seem to do. And for the same reason as yours, I quit.
desert padre
I find the Facebook phenomenon absurd and a little bit sad. More than a year ago, a friend sent me an email about how she put pics of her new home on her Facebook page. So, I followed the link because I did want to see the pics. Of course, I wasn’t able to see the pics unless I had a Facebook account, so I created a fake one with a little-used email address, a fake name and wrong birth date. I haven’t added anything to it and have no info or pics on it.
Remarkably enough, I’ve gotten quite a few “friend” requests (which I ignore) based on absolutely NO information! One lady wondered if I was one of her high school classmates, so I guess my false name sounded familiar to her, but the others apparently wanted to be my “Facebook friend” for no reason at all. How shallow/absurd is that?!
The sad part is that real communication has suffered. Friends don’t bother to call much or even email anymore to tell you news or just talk. They put all of their business out there on their Facebook page and many use it as the sole vehicle to communicate. There’s a lot wrong with that but I’m struck by the irony. So many “Facebook friends” but real friendship and personal communication are suffering.
There are people who tell you they just picked up a paperclip off the floor, just scratched their ear. People with 10,000 “Friends” (do they have any strangers?). If you just treat it like another form of email it’s pretty dull. It’s pretty dull anyway too. As for people reacting to something one does, remember it’s a bunch of electrons. Push the chair away from the screen and you have no cares at all.
I would be curious to know how old you all are?
Even so there will be another revolution that will sweep away server centric businesses such as Facebook and it is called IPv6. Right now to connect with people, due to the limitations of IPv4, people have to connect via a server and there are issues with who ‘owns’ the data. With IPv6 people will connect to other people without some company getting in the middle.
I’m closing in on 40. My children are 14, 12, and 7. (The 14yo and 12yo both have Facebook pages. Fortunately, both my wife and I have several relatives who are on FB and keep a close watch on our kids.)
I am almost 80, have been married almost 58 years, have children 50 and 53, 5 grandchildren, and one brand-new great-grandson. As I grew up, I was taught that there SOME things you just don’t need to tell the world.
desert padre
That’s [b]one[/b] brand-new great-grandson. Sorry ’bout that.
desert padre
FWIW I am 25, have never had a Facebook account, and don’t intend on getting one.