The problem with posts like this, both pro- and anti-Facebook, is that they are just someone's experience and our experiences vary. If your personal use of Facebook had similar results to the author's, you nod your head, perhaps virtually applaud, and share the link. I know I'm tempted to do so here.
But I also know that there are people who use Facebook in a way that strengthens, augments and reinforces real-life relationships. I've also read of studies that show a positive, not a negative, correlation between time spent on social media and how engaged people are with others in person. Some will say, "well, duh" to that, and will shake their heads at an article like this, which to them only shows that someone doesn't know how to use Facebook.
Both experiences are valid. I follow a sociologist on Twitter who writes a lot of essays from the latter viewpoint. To him, it's a theoretical split. There is the "digital dualist" theory, that basically says online/offline is a zero sum game and social media makes friendships shallow and disposable, and there is the "augmented reality" theory that all is connected, that what we do online is real life and not something different. And he holds the latter theory to be correct while the former, he finds simplistic, sentimental and broken. (I'm thinking of @nathanjurgenson if anyone wants to follow along, have done my best to represent his views but obviously this summary is my own)
I disagree with all of the above. It has become ever more clear to me that some people really do use and experience Facebook in a dualistic way while others do not. There is no one, unified, grand theory of Facebook that encompasses all experiences. Both camps would like to say, "This is how it is, period", but they are really saying, "This is how it is for me".
I agree. I've experienced a wide range of reactions to Facebook.
In the early days, when the info on your profile was the killer app, I closely curated mine as though it were my online representation of myself.
When my college girlfriend broke up with me, it became a tool of obsession to desperately try to understand why it happened.
Then I forced myself not to check her profile for almost a year, and it was a representation of my willpower and reconstructed self-esteem.
When Facebook made all of your profile entries into linkable graph objects, among other changes that destroyed privacy, I rebelled and shut down my Facebook account.
After leaving grad school, I eventually reactivated, because I realized that when I wanted to visit people, Facebook was by far the easiest way to get in touch.
Nowadays, I have built a really strong circle of people I know from real life but keep in touch mostly on Facebook, and I can honestly say that it's been an intellectual revolution for me. I exchange ideas with people and have debates that I rarely have in person. It's absolutely broadened my horizons. It's made me a much better writer, debater, and communicator.
Obviously, Facebook is what you make of it. Sure, you have to navigate the minefield of what Zuckerberg wants it to be, but for me, it's become indispensable as communication tool, and I pity people who let it be a source of negativity to them instead of taking the positive aspects of it for what it's worth. It's just a tool.
> But I also know that there are people who use Facebook in a way that strengthens, augments and reinforces real-life relationships.
My mother, who lives in the countryside, no Internet, late 50s, first saw her 2-year old niece when I showed her the photos my cousin had posted on Facebook. She was amazed and happy at the same time.
So yes, while for some Facebook may look like this juggernaut that tries to destroy everything on its path, for others is just a way to experience some emotions that otherwise wouldn't be possible.
Sharing photos was very much possible before facebook, and is still possible without facebook. Quite contrary to your claim that facebook is making this possible that wouldn't be otherwise, they are actually limiting what most people think is possible, having convinced the world at large that they are the internet. Facebook is destined to continue following the same path as AOL.
While I concede to your point that we should not allow isolated views of individuals to taint our overall purview of a given topic; that these are peoples opinions and that opinions are not finite or absolute. We must also realize that life is the shared experience and combined knowledge of humanity insofar.
You pose that they "are just someone's experience and our experiences vary," and I would say that is the entire point of posts like these. Experiences do vary, and you cannot experience or test for them all. By sharing our experiences -- good or bad -- they present you with invaluable information. The proverbial mile in a man's shoes. A man who can feel like the Emperor has no clothes, and feels compelled to cry out against the social trend. Or a person who was empowered by social media, because of an unexpected exchange on a whim. Which brings me to my point.
For the longest time, I didn't understand Twitter. There was a fundamental disconnect, and all the weird syntax and limits were off putting. Then one night, during a the intermission of a hockey game, a humorous moment happened between the analysts. In that moment, I recalled I was following Jeremy Roenick, one of the analysts involved in the exchange, on Twitter. So I pulled my phone, tweeted at him, "LOL. That was awesome." And slipped my phone back in to my pocket.
Imagine my surprise when the intermission had concluded and the puck dropped for the third period when my phone buzzed. It was Jeremy Roenick on Twitter, just saying thanks. No, really, imagine my surprise. This is old hat to everyone already on the Twitter tip, but my mind had just been blown to pieces. Imagine trying to break that scenario down for anyone around the dawn of television? I used a device to talk to the man on the TV, and he talked back, in real time. Modern witchcraft. In that moment I switched from "Twitter is stupid," to, "Twitter is the single greatest thing since the last wild declaration I've made." I understood it finally, Twitter connects the world, directly.
You can say that he "doesn't know how to use Facebook" and even be correct, but that doesn't matter. To him, until he gets new information or insight, his opinion and experience with the product is absolute. It happened and here's how he felt. There's valuable information about the human experience in why he feels that way, and discussion to be had about why people seem to experience this duality. And the discussion is only going to evolve and change as we both grow the web and social, as well as when more of the world's youth who have never lived without these tools continue to grow online; as more of the world's cultures begin to increase their presence online and inter-mingle.
These posts, while agreeably fixated on the opinions of individuals, are part of the process for all of us as a whole. Also, ironically, the act of the post itself is sharing something socially, albeit not first party on Facebook.
I can't even debate this blog, because if he doesn't get utility from Facebook, socially, then he doesn't get utility form it. That's factual.
But I, and most of my close friends, get HUGE social utility from the platform. Some just use it for Events, some for micro-blogging, some for passively keeping in touch, some for messaging, etc. etc. But I know lots of people much better because of Facebook.
Facebook yields a lot of value for a lot of people. Most of the people I am friends with use it extensively, and post things that will make it harder for them to get a public sector job that requires any kind of background check. They are pretty much all banned from politics for the content that they have shared. Not a lot of college students in the US are choosing majors that will help them get jobs, and it makes me sad that they are hurting their chances even more. They have heard from me and other people that it is important to communicate so openly only with those they trust, but I have only managed to teach a few of them how to use cryptography effectively. It is a very hard sell.
Facebook is worth it for a lot of people. But it's easy to run too far against the diminishing returns that additional time on it yields, and it's easy to slam doors in your future that may otherwise have been valuable.
My own experiences with Facebook have been pretty disappointing. I ended up reconnecting with old friends I'd lost touch with over the years, only to find out that with the exception of exactly one of them, they all had political, religious, and social views vastly different than my own.
A large number of them also apparently spend what I would consider a very unhealthy amount of time on Facebook posting angry, racist messages that just seem to continually make them angrier and more racist as they feed off of one another. I've lost a lot of respect for a lot of people because of the things they put on Facebook. It's like, they log on to the site and all filters go off.
I've found that with the exception of 2 or 3 people who only seem to communicate with the outside world via their Facebook account, everyone that I follow whom I genuinely want to keep up with are ones I was already talking to through other channels.
Myself and most of my friends use Skype quite extensively for keeping in touch. Others email and use Google Talk.
To be honest - it is actually somewhat important for racist people to be able to communicate in the open like that. You don't want to sweep your problems under the carpet and pretend they don't exist. Facebook has shown a lot of people just how far from dead racism really is.
I don't use FB at all anymore, I have a deactivated account that I will log into once every year and a half or so when I need somebody's phone number and I don't have their email address. There really is a lot of value in how connected the network is, but to be honest I find my life to be infinitely more satisfying when I'm not spending most of it comparing myself to others. If I want to communicate, I like to maximize bandwidth, and use phone if I can't video chat or be in person. I hate texting because of how little communication happens compared with a phone call. So many misunderstandings happen when you strip out the vocal layer and limit the text length so drastically.
> My own experiences with Facebook have been pretty disappointing. I ended up reconnecting with old friends I'd lost touch with over the years, only to find out that with the exception of exactly one of them, they all had political, religious, and social views vastly different than my own.
"I used to like that guy, until I found out he thinks things what are different from things I think"
I don't mind that they have different opinions/views, I just meant that after reconnecting came the realization that we have virtually nothing in common anymore, so I didn't really derive any benefit out of it in the sense that it didn't really rekindle any old friendships.
Nothing wrong with that at all and I can respect that, our lives just went in different directions.
The only ones where I was really bothered/lost respect where the ones constantly posting the racist/hateful stuff, which certainly wasn't all of them, but a large enough portion that a combination of these two factors has just made the whole experience useless at best.
I'm not on FB. (Seriously.) What are they sharing that is so embarassing for their future jobs? Affairs? Stripper parties? Pot smoking? Wet t-shirt contests?
Watching "Mike & Molly" on CBS is telling me that in the future none of that matter. If the granny network has a show about pot-smoking and guys going down on senior citizens, then those types of photos will be considered PG-13 in the near future.
That kind of content is televised precisely because it is a controversial spectacle that "normal" people aren't engaging in.
They post photos they take at interesting parties. Pretty standard for college but enough to twist any of them into grossly irresponsible, bad people if they ever decide to try to change something controlled by a powerful entity that chooses to fight back.
Yeah, Obama can say he's done cocaine and other things, but to my knowledge he told of those things to diffuse any potential ammo the other side could use against him in the presidential election - long after he had already become a very powerful man. It is my fear that many people will simply be denied entry at the gate. And I'm not expecting them to be running for office, but I am expecting a lot of them to join NGO's where they will need to take part in some level of political struggle.
I use Facebook, somehow I managed to get a federal job, even after multiple background checks of varying thoroughness. The big thing a lot of these checks look for is how susceptible you might be to outside pressure. Who cares if you got drunk a lot in college? What they really want to know is if you have a mistress or some other secret that could be used as blackmail.
It sounds like a sad life, if you are supposed to live it by some specific rules that make it possible to get a public sector job later on. I think if this is the situation, it is the public sector that needs fixing, not peoples' lives or Facebook.
You are absolutely free to share anything you want with whomever you choose. Just make sure you properly define who all that is and use basic crypto to keep out the unintended.
It's not the public sector job so much as the ability to participate in politics to seek change without giving a checkmate to any potential adversary who has police friends that can view any content.
You are right, but there might be initial utility to a lot of people and still have net negative effect over long time. Think of Tesco or Wal-Mart opening up in your neighbourhood. Initially it is good for everyone, then the mom&pop shops close down, then downtown loses its vitality, etc. etc.
Similarly, I don't mind Facebook doing whatever they do and being useful to a lot of people. What saddens me is how other (often superior) options become slowly unavailable.
The only option that was worth anything that I've seen that seems to have disappeared for my generation due to technology is the what I call "the meeting place". This is where, due to the lack of constant connectivity, people would designate a place that you just would go, no matter what, at certain times.
Think the Pool Hall in "Dazed and Confused" or the bar in "Cheers" for a couple pop culture examples. From both pop culture references and anecdotal evidence I've collected, it seems the "if nothing else is going on we always meet at x place" used to be more common than it is now. Now everyone wants to know who's going to be there, when, etc. before they decide whether to go.
But you set up the argument incorrectly. It's not a matter of whether or not one gets utility from Facebook. It's a matter of whether that utility is worth the cost. I would posit (although cannot prove) that most Facebook users are not aware of what the platform is costing them in terms of time and attention (not to mention things that they say that make them ineligible for a lot of jobs). They are only aware of the benefits they are getting.
> "a.k.a. "listening to the sound of my own voice""
Why do we have to shit all over people like that? People writing crap onto a website where other people seem to respond positively to it: listening to the sound of one's own voice.
Why is it that every time some group of people are having fun, we need to stomp on their sandcastle and call them names?
I can see the second part of your argument (though IMO it's massively overblown), but that first part is just mean-spirited and unnecessary.
> Why is it that every time some group of people are having fun, we need to stomp on their sandcastle and call them names?
Because, obviously, all social interactions that existed 10 years ago were perfectly natural and acceptable, but new types of social interactions that the youngsters are using are evil and bad and evidence of the speedy decline of civilization.
I would suggest its because facebook isn't regarded as really being "social". Social used to mean actually meeting people, now it means clicking a box. "Social" has been redefined to a point many people cannot accept its new meaning.
Social also used to mean phoning people up, or before that writing letters (there have been plenty of famous historical friendships that were done an the speed of post).
There are still friendships that happen solely through the mail. I have a friend who is a pen pal with someone in prison. I don't know too much about prison so I don't know if there is a reason that theirs is through the mail only instead of using more modern means.
Even when I was in school the idea of a pen pal was not foreign (I was in school in the last 9 years. Is that too long ago?).
>>Why do we have to shit all over people like that? People writing crap onto a website where other people seem to respond positively to it: listening to the sound of one's own voice.
Because that's basically what it is. Micro-blogging serves two purposes: to seek attention and to feel good about oneself (usually in the form of a rant that one gets off their chest). So describing it as listening to the sound of one's voice seems appropriate.
Why do you say "listening to the sound of my own voice"?
I enjoy reading about my aunt baking, photos that show my brother is enjoying his new job, the games my school friends are playing and enjoying. Also, out of all of those people I've never seen any of them post anything which would make them ineligible for a job, I only see such things on websites like reddit.
I could have made my point more powerfully in a long form essay, I'm sure, but I think it's pretty easy to ascertain that I meant "utility in aggregate" or "value added to their lives in aggregate".
I agree with you. I am now living in Canada, having moved from the UK. Facebook makes it much more practical for me to keep in touch with friends and family across the globe. Sure there is skype or email, or I could start a blog or whatever. But latter 2 just take too much time, and the last one is a one way process. People get to spend small amounts of time, or nearly nothing if they are just uploading a picture from their phone. Some/most of the time, these pictures would most likely not get shared, it may just be my nieces playing in the park, hardly breaking news worth emailing me about.
With this in mind, the only benefit of the group I can think of was that it helped gather “background information.”
The problem I see with a lot of people, esp in North America (or this may just be my personal experience) is they add EVERYBODY to Facebook. Just met you, "hey, you on Facebook?" whereas I only have people that I know: family, friends, ex-collegues, old school friends. If you have 800 "friends" on Facebook then you're going to be inundated with garbage. You also have the option of "spring cleaning" your friends list. Haven't spoken to you in a long time, unfriend. I don't understand this thing where you add strangers to your social circle, there's a lot of personal information on there.
That's why I haven't quit facebook- I have 3 groups I'm part of that are a big part of my life. One of them is responsible for at least half my "real life" social life. I think on some level you have to ask why these groups led me to real social fulfillment, but other facebook groups like the ones the author here talks about don't. Maybe there is a Dunbar's number, a number of people above which social cohesion breaks down. But my own impression is that you have to recognize that facebook is a tool and there is still a need for human social leaders, what seems to be a rare breed, to coalesce around. These people have to be good at bringing people together, at planning events, at creating environments where social ties flourish. In each of my successful groups, one or two people have stepped up to organize interesting conversations and face to face events. Without such people, my favorite groups would probably have died the same death as Richie's college group.
This article sounds silly. Most of us have grown up with our parents talking to their friends in "real life". I don't know about some of you, but I definitely talk to my friends face-to-face, whenever I can...
To me, the Internet and social media, are simply a change. Just like the telephone was a "change". Before then, you'd talk to people face-to-face, (or using smoke signals) so I'd imagine if we looked through some newspapers when telephones first came in, we'd probably see this exact same post.
> Before then, you'd talk to people face-to-face, (or using smoke signals) so I'd imagine if we looked through some newspapers when telephones first came in, we'd probably see this exact same post.
That's the exact same point I was trying to make to one of my colleagues when she saying that relying on Facebook to communicate with your friends is a mistake, while phone conversations are the way to go. I was telling her that my grandma was looking at a telephone as the work of the devil, not that she was religious or anything, just that the unexpected ringing of it would stop any hardworking people from doing their job so that it would only be a waste of time and resources. My friend wasn't convinced, she was asking me "but how could your grand-mother live without a telephone?".
But, as others have noted, there is something to be said about the more personal nature of a telephone call. Also, we don't broadcast what we had for lunch to our friends and family via telephone. I think it's this shallow, group-level contact that the author is targeting, not necessarily one-on-one messaging, although "pixels" are undeniably less personal than voice, which is arguably less personal than face-to-face contact.
The internet in the 2000s is a much, much richer medium than telephone calls in the 1900s. Look at us - integrating throughout or taking time from our day to discuss and debate the news here, online.
In my current life, communication that I have with my friends via Facebook is closer, faster and more reliable than anything other than in person communication.
It happens very often, friend do not answer phone or text but will notice Facebook message right away.
I can't even compare conversations in comments in a photo of me in hospital with anything else. My friends (who mostly didn't know each other) learned who is worried about me and arranged a visit to hospital together right under my photo in comments.
People tend to abuse Facebook a lot. But if you use it as a tool it's fine.
Almost everything I ever want to say when people look at me in awe and say "You aren't on Facebook?".
I just don't get any satisfaction from maintaining a list of acquaintances and classmates that I happen to know because we happened to go the same school and I have no interest in reading about their lives and stalking them and finding out who their girlfriend/boyfriends are and who their newest friend is.
I like the traditional way of friendship and communication because it has a 'natural permission setting'. For example if you ask my close friends they can tell you a lot of stuff about me, but once you get a little further, they wont know that much.
Facebook creates this artificial thing where you can get a lot of information about someone without them knowing and you can exchange a very small amount in return.
In the traditional way, if you care enough about me to want to know if I'm single or not, you will have to ask me (explicit expression) but using Facebook you can just look it up (implicit).
Facebook to me is hot garbage, cult of the celebrity trash.
Nobody I know in my circle of IRL friends and family uses it anymore when you can sign up to twitter under a nym and directly ask guys like Charlie Miller questions about exploit payload delivery instead of being drowned in an avalance of spam wall posts, annoying quiz results, farm watering requests, and endless PMs from ex girlfriends or people from highschool you have no intention of talking to ever again because you didn't like them then, why would you want to be their e-friend now.
To me, twitter is the ultimate example of the "cult of the celebrity", as most people on twitter seem to follow celebrities, in order to read what vacuous comments they can fit into 140 characters.
On the other hand, Facebook is the ideal system for me to keep in contact and up-to-date with friends and family who live very far away from me, and see what is going on in their lives.
Now, obviously we've just had different views. Despite the fact I've tried, and failed, to get "into" twitter more than once, enough clever people use it that I assume I am missing something, or it just isn't my vibe. But for me Facebook has a much, much higher quality vs. garbage ratio than Twitter.
I wonder if there's a market for something in-between. A Facebook-alike service with no apps, no advertising and nothing but posts containing original content (no 'share').
a decentralized phone app social network would work to cut down on costs because you'd make no income :P
i prefer to have a private jabber/OTR chatroom open with a bunch of friends in it to talk to each other back and forth like a slow room IRC channel all day. privacy ftw so nobody ends up fired when going on a rant about a project, their company or relationships.
That would be ideal, but I doubt the US government would allow a private communication platform to operate on a large scale. Unless it was hosted outside of the states, it would be quickly backdoored for their benefit.
I've had ideas like that in the past (think Twitter crossed with GPG), but I think you'd struggle to get people adopting the platform.
I don't have any of the same problems you do. So for me there is a strong and obvious relationship between the maturity of your friends and the maturity of their posts.
Perhaps the newsfeed isn't useful, but Facebook has largely replaced email for personal communication for me - you know people actually check their Facebook inbox, as opposed to their 3/6/more email inboxes, and you can easily set up mailing lists and events. The newsfeed I could probably live without, but the messaging system is a killer app because of the network effects.
I think facebook definitely has beneficial uses (reconnecting with old friends, arranging events etc). But I feel like a lot of people are addicted to it and allow it to get in the way of having real, face-to-face interactions. Eg people who can't have a dinner conversation without looking down every 10 seconds to check their wall. It's a kinda scary trend that seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent in the younger generations.
It's funny, but if you read the book The Information by James Gleick, you can see how people thought the exact same things about the telegraph that we do about modern communications technologies, both positive and negative.
Facebook is a tool. And like all tools, its value is defined by how you choose to use it.
Two years ago it was a worthless, annoying site with news feed full of mommies talking about their kids' snot.
So I engaged with the site to make it my own.
Today, because of relationships sustained and informed by Facebook, I'm doing Crossfit, visiting old friends in person more frequently, sending packages to new and old friends who are deployed to Afghanistan, and joining events like Tough Mudder and GoRuck Challenges.
I think often about the privacy issues, the time suck that it can be, but I also have to think about positive changes that have come about because of the way I've used this particular tool. For me FB it's a bigtime net positive.
"The article is about the tendencies in communication due to Facebook."
Yup, but my point, poorly made perhaps, is that you define your communication tendencies, and FB is just another communication tool. Not vice versa as the author intimates.
Well you know, I find I agree with a fair amount in this post. At the core of FB is there not a paradox - the more 'connected' we become online the less we engage in more substantive communication offline? For me, I see an abstraction that takes place; an FB profile check on a friend replaces a phone call, an FB invite replaces a more direct intimate invitation etc. Are such abstractions corrosive to relationships in the long run? I'm increasing concluding they are. Further, does a system that abstracts relationships amplify negative patterns of behaviour too, such as bullying, stalking, soap boxing and ranting polemics, obnoxious behaviour/superfluous prattle for sake of attention seeking etc? Possibly. The toxic paring of FB with the complications of adolescence seems tangible to me too; my 14 year old step sister has become a veritable celebrity at school as she uses FB as the medium with which to qualify quite natural inclinations for her age; peer recognition, kudos, etc. Robbed of context and played out in front of an goading and somewhat unsympathetic audience these natural inclinations have warped into something quite odd and unpleasant. I hope she'll look back and laugh one day but you know some kids don't pull through it: http://goo.gl/nzDb1 You can be mentally rather delicate in these years. As an aside, the distracting potential of FB seems glaring obvious too; I have witnessed colleagues productivity plummet when some FB scandal erupts in their digital social sphere, frustrating when this impacts the rest of the teams work day. As someone said on here before, I guess use in moderation is the key, but again, if people don't like the FB service and want to opt out all together, 'more power to them' I say. This perception of a FB profile as a necessity in the 21st century seems fanciful on one level and insidious on another.
The problem is that it's to be removed completely from Facebook. I think about deleting my profile all the time, but there's potential for awkwardness and offense that aren't worth it. Facebook has engrained itself in our lives pretty deeply and it's going to be a huge challenge to dig it back out.
I had a facebook account once. I thought that by deleting my account it would somehow limit my social life and, of course, make it a lot harder to keep my friends and family updated.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Not having a facebook account (or any social media website account) forced me to be more active. It forced me to contact my friends face to face. This has HUGE advantages.
This notion that facebook is integrated into our lives tightly is absolutely an illusion; one that Facebook relys on (or any site like it). Take the initiative and go out of your way to contact your friends/family "the old fasioned way".
Rallying groups for a cause isn't as hard as it seems to be, either. You just have to work a bit more. So what? Our society(ies) is/are becoming so lazy it's almost unbearable.
Facebook does not dictate your life in any way, shape or form. There are many people who don't use it and are just fine without it.
Then use other means of contact. The point isn't to replace facebook with the same amount of convenience. The point is to disable the illusion that Facebook is necessary to keep in contact with your distant friends/family.
Use a phone. Use the postal system. Yes, it's not as "instant" but it at least shows that you put in work to contact them. Or you can use open technologies like Jitsi or Ekiga to do video chat with them (if they are willing. If they aren't, then perhaps explain to them why it's important). There are options out there. Facebook isn't the ONLY technology that closes the gap.
I'm sorry, but this is just "anti" for the sake of it. If you have a good enough relationship with friends and family, Facebook is just another medium to stay in touch. I'd agree that if it's the only medium, there may be issues, but your suggestions are merely alternatives, no better and in some instances slightly worse (no, the postal service is not a valid alternative). Yes, there are other options, but Facebook works well enough for a majority of folk. I'll come clean and say that I'm not a fan of Facebook, I find it too intrusive. That said most of my immediate friends and family use it and get an awful lot out of it. The psychological benefits of just feeling connected cannot be understated.
It is not "anti" at all. Like I wrote already, the point isn't to replace the convenience of facebook. It is to seek alternatives that will "do the job". Yes, the postal service is absolutely an alternative, whether you agree or not. It is a means of old communication. Yes, it's a bit "inconvenient" but it works.
Complacency is not a good argument: "the majority of people I know use it so it shouldn't be criticized for the sake of convenience". That's what I hear, maybe I'm deaf.
Jitsi or Ekiga or any other type of open technology can effectively replace facebook quite well. They also give you "the psychological benefits of just feeling connected". I would submit that the Internet fills that niche, not Facebook or others like it.
People can use it all they want. Fine, no problem. But to lean on the idea that it is somehow impossible to delete an account without becoming a hermit is, in my view, a complete asinine idea.
Why 'open'? Is that the issue that you have with Facebook? If not, why not Skype? It's available on more platforms that the two specific examples that you mention. The thing that you are dismissing is the convenience. Like it or not, literally millions of people find it extremely convenient to stay in touch with friends and acquaintances easily.
I am dismissing the "convenience" factor simply to prove a point. I am under no illusion that there needs to be better alternatives out there that fill in the gaps. However, it is also important to note that while there is certainly a convenience factor that some people (or perhaps even most people) will gravitate to, there are also other factors to consider. Freedom, being one. Now, I'm not one to badger people about what Freedoms you can/will lose while using a centralized service such as Facebook or Google, but I do think it's important to recognize the serious problems those services pose.
I also think it's important to not get off track from my original point which is: It is not the end of your social life if you decide to delete your facebook account (or google or twitter etc.). That is my point.
I emphasize "open" because those technologies are open for review by thousands of eyes. If there are privacy issues it will be known and tended to. Using something like Skype does not ensure your privacy; especially since now it is more centralized and not p2p. There has been many articles released about the privacy concerns of using Skype (wiretapping, China, etc.). I, for one, do not ever want to put my privacy in the back seat for the sake of convenience and I think it's imperative to educate or at least mention the problems with closed technologies that are supposed to be "private".
Jitsi, as far as I can tell, runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Those platforms are pretty much covered. I'm not sure if it runs on Android or iOS. Though, I'm sure there are people working on mobile solutions (I am, at least). I wouldn't dismiss it so easily. Skype runs like utter crap on Linux systems and while Jitsi may not run all that well compared to Skype, it is at least open sourced and free software so people can work on it.
Email is essentially a social network. A social network is simply, at its core, a system which allows friends/family/other to communicate and keep up to date with each other. In fact, I would go so far as to say the original social network is not Facebook or MySpace but the Internet itself.
Again, I'm not trying to suggest there are alternatives that can completely replace Facebook (or others) convenience factor. Not at all. I am simply saying, you don't need it.
Why is video chat impossible? International calls are the perfect use case for it. (I guess you could drop the video, and just do a VOIP phone call also.)
I live in Cambodia, work 18 hour days and between email, skype and the telephone I keep up with friends in family in North America on both coasts, in Europe, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, India and even people in my own time zone (Thailand, Laos, Singapore). I don't use facebook for any of this. It isn't difficult, and at least out here, most international calls are very cheap. And even if they were you can call through google voice or skype to mobiles and land lines at very low rates.
> Not having a facebook account (or any social media website account) forced me to be more active. It forced me to contact my friends face to face. This has HUGE advantages.
I'm assuming you don't have kids and don't need an easy way to share photos with family. You know, the parents that ask you to email all of your photos?
I know that piles of baby photos are annoying, but they are less annoying then when they are forced on you via email. In FB at least you can squelch people if they annoy you. Or if you really like your friends, you can create a separate account for baby pics and only post to that account.
Again with this notion that facebook solves the "sharing photo's" problem. It is not the only means of communication or file sharing. There are applications out there that are much better and less susceptible to unwanted eyes/abuse.
While I may not have children, I have close friends who do and family that does. So what? I communicate with them just fine and share bday photos like everyone else without a problem and without being tied to facebook.
If you have a problem with annoying photo's without facebook, then may I suggest telling those involved with sending you too much info/photo's to maybe limit it a bit? It's not hard to do and you can do it in such a way that doesn't sound mean. For such a "social network" people have trouble communicating with each other, it seems.
> While I may not have children, I have close friends who do and family that does. So what? I communicate with them just fine and share bday photos like everyone else without a problem and without being tied to facebook.
How does everyone else do this? How do people get both sets of grandparents checking the same photo sharing site where mom can take pictures at the playground and share instantly? What photo site is easy enough that the grandparents can snap photos on their smartphone (that they barely know how to use) that lets them easily upload them?
> It is not the only means of communication or file sharing.
Of course not. The network effect makes it easy to push the last few missing family members onto it for a narrow purpose.
> If you have a problem with annoying photo's without facebook, then may I suggest telling those involved with sending you too much info/photo's to maybe limit it a bit?
I would never tell new parents that. Luckily, some forms of sharing are easy to rate limit.
> For such a "social network" people have trouble communicating with each other, it seems
That's just it. Email isn't really a social network.
Even though Facebook is really big for photos, there are dedicated apps/platforms for sharing photos or albums with people that do a better job, especially where privacy is an issue (like baby photos). I don't see any advantage to using Facebook over a dedicated app or just email.
The only advantage is network effect. It's hard enough getting the grandparents to use any service, so having a few people already on facebook makes it that much easier to just get everyone on the same service.
Just full your account up with junk info, use a nickname, install ghostery, and sign up with site specific auth. I'm pretty sure Fucking in Austria has an extremely high Facebook population... I know ALOT of my friends say they come from there LOL
Then its nothing more than a forum with photos of your friends and family, downloaded them and untag yourself.
I didn't have time to read the article. I'm just coming here to tell the author (if he reads this) that the typo and general design of this website/blog (or whatever it is) is absolutely stunning. One of the best-looking I've seen. Bravo.
I think its a bit unfair to compare our parents generation (boomers) to ours (millennials, arguably).
The first thing that comes to mind is that, at least in my social circle, no one has a land line. We move a lot. We change cell phone numbers (carrier problems, relationship issues, who knows).
Its arguable that a FB presence is actually more stable than a physical presence for some social groups. Its not an all encompassing solution for human interaction by any means, but "worth it" is a very subjective term.
It seems the author was looking at the Facebook group the wrong way. I'm sure most people signed up to it to get questions answered and discover who their roommate was going to be. He seems disappointed that the people he talked to on it didn't become his friends. The group served it's purpose - to make friends you converse with people in person when you get to college. The author seems to have unrealistic expectations of social media.
The main thing about about Facebook, or other similar sites, is to ask yourself how much value you're getting out of it versus how much time you're spending on it. It you're spending a lot of time but not getting much value then it may not be worth it.
Facebook's mission is "to make the world more open and connected", which to me does not imply replacing existing forms of communication. The only competitor to ye olde telephone machine is Skype.
But I also know that there are people who use Facebook in a way that strengthens, augments and reinforces real-life relationships. I've also read of studies that show a positive, not a negative, correlation between time spent on social media and how engaged people are with others in person. Some will say, "well, duh" to that, and will shake their heads at an article like this, which to them only shows that someone doesn't know how to use Facebook.
Both experiences are valid. I follow a sociologist on Twitter who writes a lot of essays from the latter viewpoint. To him, it's a theoretical split. There is the "digital dualist" theory, that basically says online/offline is a zero sum game and social media makes friendships shallow and disposable, and there is the "augmented reality" theory that all is connected, that what we do online is real life and not something different. And he holds the latter theory to be correct while the former, he finds simplistic, sentimental and broken. (I'm thinking of @nathanjurgenson if anyone wants to follow along, have done my best to represent his views but obviously this summary is my own)
I disagree with all of the above. It has become ever more clear to me that some people really do use and experience Facebook in a dualistic way while others do not. There is no one, unified, grand theory of Facebook that encompasses all experiences. Both camps would like to say, "This is how it is, period", but they are really saying, "This is how it is for me".