Everything these days is done on line, from shopping to talking to a friend. The amount of face-to-face talking has decreased dramatically since social networking became part of our everyday lives. We are constantly on our smart phones, checking out emails, seeing what out favourite celebrity put up on Instagram, tweeting about last nights episode of Master Chef and seeing what our “friends” are up to on Facebook. Between all of these many social networking sights, the one to have the biggest impact on modern day society is Facebook.
By now, the phrase "it's not official until it's on Facebook" should just be a part of everyday life. Most of the time, this statement is in relation to the forming of relationships as well as breakups. Even friendships are sometimes joked about as not being "official" until the two people are Facebook friends. Has this Web site really taken over? (Caitlin Downer, The Quad News, March 2009) Facebook was originally created by Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg along with five other of his roommates on February 4th 2004, and became a success overnight at Harvard and surrounding Universities and in just over a year the whole virtual world was talking about Facebook. So where are now? Fast forward 9 years.
According to Wikipedia, as of September 2012 there are over one billion uses on Facebook with 8.9% of these fake. A 2009 study showed that Facebook ranked as the most used social networking sight and according to the page, Facebook's income is over 5.1 Billion USD. Now think about this, some people can have up to 5000 friends; with much less than 1% being people they have actually met or know personally. We seem to believe that the more friends we have on Facebook the more popular our persona becomes. We assume that because we have so many “friends” on Facebook that we don’t have to spend quality time with our real friends, because even though you haven’t seen them for the past month, their status updates have kept you in the loop. Which brings up my other question; is Facebook making us oblivious? So much time is spent seeing if there is anything better happening that we seem to miss what is really going on around us. Unaware of what we are missing in the real world, too focused on what we could be going on with out us in the virtual world.
I believe that Facebook is taking over our lives. Everyone with an account is checking it whenever they have a spare second; they are updating, liking and commenting whenever they can. After turning off your laptop at night to go to sleep, how many of you lay down and pick up your phone to scroll through your news feed? Could you go a week without Facebook? Or even a day? We need peace and quiet in our lives again, we need face-to-face connection with friends, we need to look out the window, experience what life is giving us and take nothing for granted. We should stop having the urge to constantly feel like we need to know what everyone is doing ALL THE TIME. I think it’s time to switch off, read a book, go for a swim with friends and use Facebook for what it was made for; purely connecting with people.
(Caitlin Downer, The Quad News, March 2009 http://www.quadnews.net/opinion/does-facebook-really-affect-your-life-1.1593956#.UgLQSdI_t1E)
I am totally agreeing with you that facebook has indeed taking over our every day life. Some people cannot go a day/an hour without checking their FB news feed. I suppose, they fear of being out of the loop. As Schawbel describe; 'If you aren’t active on social networks, you are in danger of being out of the loop’. I believe we should all switched off and enjoy the physical existence that life has given us.
ReplyDeleteSchawbel, D. (2009). cited in Wilkinson, (2013).