FACEBOOK OBSERVATIONS - THE GOOD AND THE NOT SO GOOD
By Kerrie Wilson
Facebook is the most popular social networking site, which is available for all to use, as long as you claim to be over thirteen years old ("Information for Parents and Educators,"2011). The August 2013 update claims that Facebook has approximately 1.15 billion users (Smith, 2013). There are good and not so good points about social networks.
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| 1-in-7-people-on-earth-facebook (Junee, T. 2012). |
Firstly, Facebook provides a space and a place where you can communicate and build on your real-life relationships as well as your social networks (Tuan, 1977, p.3). It gives you a place where you are able to find family and friends, new ones and old. For instance, if you search for an old high school friend, it would be more likely to click on a friend request icon, then to make an phone call to someone you have not spoken to in decades. When joining Facebook we are encouraged to add our personal details, such as, our name, where we live and work, as well as what schools we attended. This represents a map of how others see us and how we like to represent ourselves (Petray, 2013). Creating my persona empowers me to share who I am to my friends. Although, it is also a place where you self-monitor yourself, as Barnes suggest, cyberspace is akin to the Panopticon Prison, always feeling that you are under the jailers gaze (Barnes, 1997).
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| (Moore, C. 2012) |
However, there is a negative side to social media; online interactions can hurt our relationships. We are free to type comments when feeling emotional, which may be regretted later. Friends cannot see your body language or hear the tone in your voice and your text could be misinterpreted. As Facebook comments are in real time even after deleting could be too late to retract, hence destroying a friendship. Some see it as a time waster, instead of teenagers doing homework or outdoors playing, their on Facebook chatting with their friends. It is a successful tool to use in promoting business, but could also destroy a reputation. I chose Facebook as my social network to observe as it is the most popular. I have been honest when creating my persona and only accept people I know on my site. Facebook provides a space that I feel freedom to travel and explore.
Lastly, overall Facebook brings people closer together, you grow closer to people that you never would of offline.
References:
"Information for Parents and Educators". Facebook: Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/facebook
"August 2013, By the numbers: 39 Amazing Facebook Stats". Retrieved from http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/.
Tuan, Y. (1979). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (p.3). London, England
Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the Flanuer: Retrieved from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/passage flaneur.html
Pertray, T. (2013). BA1002: Maps, week three notes [procast]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
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Junee, T. (2012). 1-in-7-people-on-earth-facebook. Retrieved from: http://tiffannylunee.com/2012/10/04/1-in7-people-on-earth-facebook/
Moore, C. (2012). Why private companies can legally ask for access to your facebook profile. Retrieved from http://www.article-3.com/why-private-companies-can -legally-ask-for-access-to-your-facebook-profile
I do agree with you Kerrie, as I also think Facebook can be a handy virtual network site to use, but I have witnessed terrible displays of cyber bullying. The internet experience gives people the power and access to be able to explore and being able to connect with people who would otherwise be inaccessible (Turkle 1995 p.247). Even though Facebook states you have to be over the age of thirteen to join, it is quite easy for a youngster to join as they only have to put in a fake birth date and there are no security checks at all. Facebook has been fantastic for me as I have been able to locate friends with whom I lost contact with many years ago, and we now meet up for regular coffee dates.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Facebook is not 100 per cent private (even though you have your settings private), if you are to put a derogatory image or comment on your wall, within a few minutes the facebook team would delete it. So we are being watched and monitored, in a panopticon way. Every move is being watched when we are using Facebook.
Turkle, S. (1995). Panopticon, in Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet (pp.246-249). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
I am also one of the 1.15 billion users of Facebook (Smith,2013). I would agree that there are some good and not so good aspects to this particularly popular social networking site.
ReplyDeleteThe good points are the convenience and speed of this site. You have the ability to share information and get a response close to real time. Because of Facebooks popularity with my family and friends I feel comfortable sharing information within this forum.
Facebook has become a part of everyday life for me and perhaps too familiar.
Although it is great to have this real time connection and conversation with friends, It is also a great time waster. There is such a huge amount of new information constantly being uploaded that I can loose time wondering through the sites many mundane comments and photos, filtering through to see what is relevant to me.
I think Facebook (when used correctly) can be a wonderful tool to hold family and friends together when distance separates them. However it is very easy to get sidetracked within this forum and to loose track of time.
"We need to be a little more curious about powers spatial constitution and not get lost or distracted in familiar spaces." (Allen. 1998 p. 4)
Refrences:
Allen,J. Lost Geographies of power: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.