An article in the New York Times entitled, "The Way we Live Now--Growing Up on Facebook"
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/magazine/15wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&scp=20&sq=facebook&st=cse) by Peggy Orenstein gives both a very real and connected perspective on my blog topic; the evolution of social networking. She outlines how Facebook has allowed her to see people in her past that she did not necessarily want to connect to. She dabbles in the Facebook friending politics of whether or not to add a stranger, a true friend, or a kinda friend and ends up thrusting herself "into a perpetual episode of 'This Is Your Life' (complete with commercials)". Peggy argues that Facebook friends almost seem to shape someone's character through messages, pictures, etc. when most of us wanted to create our own adult identity. She writes, "As a survivor of the postage-stamp era, college was my big chance to doff the roles in my family and community that I had outgrown, to reinvent myself, to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity. Can you really do that with your 450 closest friends watching, all tweeting to affirm ad nauseam your present self?" The question is spot on. How can we escape our past, when we are stripped of our privacy and those from where we wanted to escape are trying to shape our present? This question measures whether or not it is worth it to sacrifice the value of privacy to maintain a social network. And when one decides to have 1,000 friends, what is the long-term impact of the social network? As Peggy describes, it is impossible to know the impact of social networks. In fact, many college students within the 25 million under 25 years of age have mixed feelings about, as Peggy writes, "the guinea pigs for the faux-friendship age". These college students should be thinking about this as most of us are sharing our information without restriction, viewing our friends information without their knowledge, and permitting the extended social network (friends of friends) to see our information. If we look at the values of the stakeholders in the situation Peggy delineates, we find that for the users, privacy and long-term impact concerning values. We can also deduce that there is a conflict of personal intimacy. Peggy explains that the ability to discover intimate details about a person over the course of a few minutes on a social networking website can be seen as a negative. However, Peggy writes, "....a study published in 2007 in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggested that hanging onto old friends via Facebook may alleviate feelings of isolation for students whose transition to campus life had proved rocky. Evidently they took comfort in knowing that “Dylan is drinking Peets.” There is a dichotomy here between privacy and personal interest. When does the comfort from personal interest infringe upon one's privacy. So far it seems as though there is no such boundary.
Even more important is the idea of growing up and evolving as an individual. The connectedness that a social network provides, creates an environment where people are shaping what they believe to be your life. There is absolutely no space for introspection and transformation. Peggy talks about her nieces' use of Facebook, reflecting on how it might affect them, "perhaps my nieces will find a new way to establish distance from their former selves, to clear space for introspection and transformation. Perhaps they will evolve through judicious deleting and updating of profile information, through the constant awareness of their public face." There is a valid point here. That is, Facebook users are so involved with their friends, public profile, and public persona that loneliness is non-existent. What happens to people without solitude and abilities to self-adjust/improve? They do not grow into adulthood. Peggy feels that Facebook eliminates individual growth through loneliness. Arising from this idea are a myriad of questions and conflicts. How does that affect the individual's future? How will the government play a role in limiting computer time? How can parents deter the use of social networking sites in order to allow their child solitude? Does Facebook pander towards self-awareness or selfishness? And just how much time do we spend on Facebook? Here's the graph: 15wwln-lede.graphic.350.jpg It's more than enough for us to be worried about the future. But, what does Peggy think about how this affects Facebook? Two words--THE END.
This describes a long and provocative article. It's a good reading job, but to answer your question about blog post style, it is a bit long and report-like. If you can find a couple of issues that you really want to respond to, you can do it in more blog-size chunks.
ReplyDeleteI had two thoughts. One is that for the current generation, the transition to a new self came in moving from MySpace to Facebook. Will there always need to be an evolving sequence of "cool sites" with these kinds of transitions?
The other was that the questions are posed in the generic. Do people want to trade off privacy for x.. Do they need to re-establish identities, etc.
Of course the answer starts with "depends on who". Are there interesting subpopulations, either demographically different of having different peronality profiles, family histories, etc., for whom the answers differ widely?
I think that there are a lot of good points here, but here are just a few comments:
ReplyDeleteOn Privacy: Personally, I've found that I really am not my full self on Facebook. Because of all of the people that have access to the information there, I censor myself, and only publish what I want EVERYONE to see. I definitely see the conflict between developing a new private identity and adding that 3837th friend. (exaggeration)
On Loneliness: This is actually one of the main differences I found when switching from MySpace to Facebook. On myspace, everyone has their own page, and you can really see their personality through their page, but you must actively seek most information out. On Facebook, all of the info is shoved into your face, making you feel constantly connected.
I do not completely agree with the current view on Facebook alleviating loneliness. Sometimes Facebook can do the exact opposite and make you feel lonelier than ever. As you creep through friends' pages, you see only what they want you to see - the cool friends, fun experiences, funny quotes, and witty statements. To some people, that may actually have a depressing effect. Why isn't my life that cool? Why can't I be as funny? They fail to realize that they are only viewing a highly censored version of this person, and that real life is not always like it is portrayed on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Facebook can keep you constantly connected in one way, but completely detached in another. The lack of face-to-face contact combined with the tendency of people to act differently on the Internet makes for a highly superficial experience in my opinion.