The Facebook Generation

Admit it! Facebook is one of your most-often visited websites. Even if you do not use Facebook regularly, you probably do have an account, or at least, used to have one. The truth is that Facebook has become an integral part of today’s life. With Facebook becoming more popular by the day, we find ourselves spending more and more time using it.

 

Facebook has equally helped young and the old ones to come together and interact virtually. It has proved to be a strong networking site bringing together long lost friends. . You are organizing an event and are looking out to advertise it large and all for free – then comes the Facebook to your rescue helping to reach out to a lot more  people than you actually know. And who doesn’t love all the “likes”, comments, and the birthday wishes that are fairly common on Facebook?

 

But there’s a dark side to it as well, whether we realize it or not.

 

The most obvious “dark” side is of course all the time we spend in Facebook that could have gone into doing something much more productive and creative. Facebook is definitely addictive, and we may end up spending much more time on it than we actually intend to.

 

Of course, we cannot forget the annoyances Facebook brings with it. Complete strangers send us friend requests—it maybe someone with whom you have 100+ mutual Facebook friends, but may not have a clue as to who the person is. The people that we do befriend may cause a lot of irritation as well. We get “tagged” in pictures that aren’t even remotely related to us just so we notice that picture and hopefully “like” or comment on that.

 

Another thing worth mentioning about Facebook is the numbers of friends in friends list. Somehow, having more Facebook friends makes you look “cool”. This should explain all those friend requests we get from strangers (some of whom may not even share a single mutual friend with). Some people take this a bit too seriously and link the number of Facebook friends to their actual social status.

 

Facebook may also lead to a lot of awkward moments. You might end up revealing more than you should have, or end up revealing things to someone you wouldn’t want him/her knowing. I don’t need to tell you stories about people getting in real trouble over things they did at Facebook.

 

What may not be obvious to you is the privacy breach that Facebook may cause. While on Facebook, we seem to have the illusion that our privacy is safe. Basically Facebook knows everything about you and wants you to feed as much information about you to it as you can—because it makes money off targeted advertising, so more information you post about yourself on Facebook, the more money they make. Although it does present us with privacy settings, it is a bit confusing and to some extent, even overwhelming. Twitter, another popular social networking site, for instance, only has two privacy options—you either make your Twitter account private or you make it public. And Twitter also doesn’t own information you post on it—however, Facebook does. By the default settings on Facebook, not just friends, but also friends of friends can view your profile (which includes your “Wall”). Someone doesn’t even need to be registered on Facebook to view your photos.

 

We need to realize that most of us are very narcissistic in nature—no matter how much we deny it. We want everyone to notice us; we want all the attention to be on us. And what better place to do that than on Facebook! To quote someone who not long ago left Facebook, “Had a wild party last night? Upload that album to Facebook and get a hundred likes and comments. You will of course complain about the number of notifications you had to deal with the next day, but deep down you’re smiling. Smiling wide.”

 

Now, this does not mean anyone has to actually stop using Facebook after reading this, but we should definitely think of trying to use it more smartly. Think about how much Facebook addict you are, and think for yourself if you need to improve your Facebook habit. We should not forget that we have other things to do as well. What one may try if you think you are a Facebook addict is to deactivate your Facebook account for just one week, and of course not login to it for the whole week. When you login after a week, your account will automatically be reactivated as if nothing really happened, but it won’t be functioning for the week. See for yourself how you do without Facebook.

 

It’s up to us to decide whether its good sides outweigh its dark sides.

 

As a parting note, I’d like to leave you with the excerpts from a popular animated sitcom ‘South Park’, which takes on Facebook on its Season 14 episode ‘You Have 0 Friends’. While it’s far from being the most-well-crafted South Park episode, it is pretty spot on (and the joke is not on Facebook, it’s on Facebook users).

 

“Hey Stan, I was on my computer at work and saw that you have a Facebook page now.”

“Yeah, dad, I was kind of forced to.”

“Well so, are you going to add me as a friend?”

“No, dad, I really don’t want to get more into it.”

“Oh, okay.”

“So, so I’m not your friend then?”

“Dad, you are my friend.”

“But you just don’t want to add me as a friend?”

“Dad, it’s just a stupid click of a button that takes 2 seconds.”

“Right, but you don’t have the two seconds, or…”

(Irritated) “I just want to do my homework!”

“Alright, fine.”

“Just to be clear, you and I are not friends?”

“Alright dad, I’ll add you.”

“Oh cool, okay.”

 

Words: Spandan Shrestha