Why the Facebook Madness?
Posted: Wednesday, August 29, 2007
by Anja Merret
Anja Merret
What is it about social networking sites, that gets people interested and makes them participate? Some Facebookers are really addicted to their profile and the communities they belong to. They visit their profile daily and search for friends to add to their collection.
There are many other activities members indulge in. They add photos to share, write messages on walls and send friendly pokes. Lets not forget one can invite other Facebookers to groups that deal with a huge variety of topics and interests. To create more activities and fun elements, Facebook recently provided a Facebook scripting language to allow the build of small applets by anyone who wanted to or could.
The people in my list of friends live in South Africa, America, Europe and Asia. Is this the reason for its popularity? Possibly, but I don’t think it is the whole picture. Yes there is a need for people to stay in touch. Long gone are the days where friends started kindergarden together, remained best friends through their life and were buried in the same graveyard after living to a ripe old age. The migration of people has taken that stability away.
Technology has allowed these migrants to stay in touch. Facebook is one of these technology enabled meeting places where news can be shared, memories revisited, new friendships made and new experiences arranged. After all the meaning of the term facebook is the collection of information and photographs to help one adapt to college life. This has been expanded to be relevant for life after college as well.
But it’s more than that. I think modern society is missing the boat when it comes to providing relevant living spaces. Gone are the informal meeting spaces that were provided by church squares, the village common, the civic centre and shops that one could walk to from home and into from the pavement. What has been built in recent years are concrete shopping malls that are meant to replace those casual social spaces and at the same time nurture the consumerism of the age.
Of course the older areas of European cities have preserved some of these spaces. Restaurants are encouraged to spill out onto pavements and shop doors open onto the streets. People meet, socialise, take part in events together. But what about the more ‘modern’ cities? People join up to visit shopping malls? Kids spend their lives at the mall. Where is the real life community? The new civic spaces need arts and craft fairs to get the people there.
What really made me make the connection was a talk on TED by Jim Kuntler who was talking about the devastation that the horrific urban landscape of shopping malls and faceless building has had on human living conditions. He attributes some of this to the worship of the motor vehicle, but also points out that architects and town planners are letting down the human race.
His talk which may be viewed here, made me wonder about Facebook and how that fitted in with our living. Are we that alienated by our environment, divorced from our families and childhood friends, that we need online communities to make up for it? Is this what drives young men to shoot at students at Virginia Tech, or where ever they do?
We seem to be facing a total alienation from support groups, people we can relate to, buildings and open spaces that make us feel part of a community. None are available to us. No wonder we are joining online communities, keeping in touch via Twitter and posting our photos to Flickr so that the few remaining friends and family members are able to keep in touch with us.
This Article has been viewed 1,050 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Thanks for your comment. I am still trying to work out the answers as well. I think it's more than a fad.
Anja, I think your assessment of modern life is probably hitting the nail on the head. I don't personally use MySpace or Facebook, but my 2 teenagers do. (In a heavily supervised way, of course). They attend a large suburban high school where there are around 700 kids per grade, 4 grades in the school. MySpace and Facebook allow them to remain tightly connected to their circle of friends even if school schedules don't allow them to see one another during the day. They come home and immediately connect to see how the day went for all of their friends. They trade stories, pat each other on the back, console anyone who's had a bad day, give homework advice, etc, etc. In that context, it is very much a community for them. One of the reasons I believe that it is healthy for them is that the community they connect with came into existence through church and school activities, so the internet enhances these relationships and allows them to grow. Whenever the internet is the only source of the connection/relationship that is where the unhealthy aspects are much more prevalent.
That sounds like such a good way for the kids to keep in touch. In my days we sat on the phone for hours... Which couldn't have been any better or worse. And at least they don't do the mall thing which is my worst kind of socialising.
Anja, We live in a world where many of us feel disenfranchized. Some cities are worse than others in terms of losing a sense of community. In Arizona, we have houses surrounded by walls on 3 sides! You rarely see your neighbors. Online networking sites provide an avenue for many to communicate in ways that they can't replicate in the community. Many people use the internet to avoid social contact. There must be a balance that is stuck between the internet and social contact. As a society, I think we have made that more difficult to achieve. Thank you for a thought-provoking article.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.