Gulati – Facebook
I liked how this article was direct in saying, “Facebook is making us
miserable.” It made me think of a particular episode of South Park where one of
the characters is feeling lonely and unimportant because he has but one friend
on Facebook. He is compelled to tell his parents about all the things his
friend is up too. His parents, unknowingly, acknowledge this new friend as a
classmate their child plays with after school. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdbPVSWqm2w
This inevitably leads to the mentioned
problems as a result in the article.
What surprises me the most is
how often we get on Facebook. I’d notice that for no apparent reason, while
reading an email or text, I would click the little blue “F” on my phone. This caused
me to realize how much of the time I was just acting out of habit. Sometimes I’d
completely forget that I looked at Facebook.
Along with this mindless checking and updating, I noticed, rather others
noticed that I was only partially present.
(Mostly they wouldn’t notice. They were on their phones as well touché).
Playing the devil’s advocate,
there are benefits to using social networking. For instance, my family is
spread throughout the states and we only see them around holidays. Calling is
sometimes difficult. However, the desire to see what is going on in their lives
is still there. When my sister was in South Korea, cell phones weren’t the best
or cheapest way to communicate. We resorted to Facebook and Skype. This was
really helpful. My sister could post pictures, comments, etc when she was able
and on our time we could do likewise.
In the last paragraph, the idea
of quitting Facebook was thrown around. I thought about this and wonder how my
social life would be impacted. I thought for only a week I would resist
Facebook. I managed a week, and then it turned into two weeks. After a month
and seeing no change, I thought it was time to “go offline” permanently. This
was in September. As much as I enjoyed
the benefits, I found myself in one of those categories of decreased social (fill
in the blank).
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