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Alexa Burns Facebook Ethnography
Alexa Burns
20 September 2008
When you open up Facebook, before you sign in, you see the words “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” What these words fail to mention is that Facebook is a tool that keeps people spending hours upon hours online, readily becoming lazier by the minute. What the welcome page should say is, “Facebook is a mesmerizing utility that connects you with laziness every time you login.” I’m not trying to ridicule Facebook, but I do believe that it consumes people’s lives, and is a hazard to becoming lazy, and can therefore ruin skills in areas, such as communication. What is it that makes users of Facebook lazy? Well, when you first login you get the long list of the news feed, plus all the other applications to choose from. Maybe there is just too much to choose from; therefore, you get caught up inspecting everything. For example, when you click on “Friends”, you get the option of looking at “Recently Added”, “Recently Updated”, “Status Updates”, or “View All Friends”. This can be very dangerous in the fact that it could take someone twenty-four hours to a whole week, depending on how many friends you have, in order to view all of his/her friends’ profiles. It is interesting to look at pictures, wall posts, and applications that other people have created in order to get the whole “scoop,” but spending three hours just looking is ridiculous. Some people just spend hours upon hours decorating their own profile. Why do we do this? Is it because we are too lazy to reach out and communicate with others face to face, or is just the normal change in our culture?
Facebook is changing our culture, and laziness could be a major outcome from this effect. First, we had cell phones for an updated communication procedure. We could communicate with someone clear across the country while driving, walking, or doing anything, instead of talking on a land line telephone at home. Email was introduced and cell phones came out with texting in order to communicate easily anywhere, whether it is in class, during work, etc. The internet has created many communication methods, and that is satisfactory, but now we have Facebook that devours people’s communication habits and makes them more and more lazy. You can press a few keys and click a few times and there you have it, a message. How do people prepare for outside communication such as job interviews, speeches, or just everyday conversation? Individuals develop an effortless attitude with communication; therefore, our culture is changing the way we proceed to correspond with others.
Many people can say “Facebook is a great method of communication!” and that is a true statement, but the true fact of it is that Facebook is only ONE method of communication. What happens to all the other processes of conversing and communication? Do we just throw it out the window or do we learn to cope with all aspects of communicating? Facebook makes it very hard to cope with all aspects of conversing, because it only focuses on one method. Therefore Facebook is making people lazy and coherent to outside interaction with others. This is a scary subject to distinguish, but what are we going to do about it? We will do nothing. Could it be that we are truly becoming lazy?
20 September 2008
When you open up Facebook, before you sign in, you see the words “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” What these words fail to mention is that Facebook is a tool that keeps people spending hours upon hours online, readily becoming lazier by the minute. What the welcome page should say is, “Facebook is a mesmerizing utility that connects you with laziness every time you login.” I’m not trying to ridicule Facebook, but I do believe that it consumes people’s lives, and is a hazard to becoming lazy, and can therefore ruin skills in areas, such as communication. What is it that makes users of Facebook lazy? Well, when you first login you get the long list of the news feed, plus all the other applications to choose from. Maybe there is just too much to choose from; therefore, you get caught up inspecting everything. For example, when you click on “Friends”, you get the option of looking at “Recently Added”, “Recently Updated”, “Status Updates”, or “View All Friends”. This can be very dangerous in the fact that it could take someone twenty-four hours to a whole week, depending on how many friends you have, in order to view all of his/her friends’ profiles. It is interesting to look at pictures, wall posts, and applications that other people have created in order to get the whole “scoop,” but spending three hours just looking is ridiculous. Some people just spend hours upon hours decorating their own profile. Why do we do this? Is it because we are too lazy to reach out and communicate with others face to face, or is just the normal change in our culture?
Facebook is changing our culture, and laziness could be a major outcome from this effect. First, we had cell phones for an updated communication procedure. We could communicate with someone clear across the country while driving, walking, or doing anything, instead of talking on a land line telephone at home. Email was introduced and cell phones came out with texting in order to communicate easily anywhere, whether it is in class, during work, etc. The internet has created many communication methods, and that is satisfactory, but now we have Facebook that devours people’s communication habits and makes them more and more lazy. You can press a few keys and click a few times and there you have it, a message. How do people prepare for outside communication such as job interviews, speeches, or just everyday conversation? Individuals develop an effortless attitude with communication; therefore, our culture is changing the way we proceed to correspond with others.
Many people can say “Facebook is a great method of communication!” and that is a true statement, but the true fact of it is that Facebook is only ONE method of communication. What happens to all the other processes of conversing and communication? Do we just throw it out the window or do we learn to cope with all aspects of communicating? Facebook makes it very hard to cope with all aspects of conversing, because it only focuses on one method. Therefore Facebook is making people lazy and coherent to outside interaction with others. This is a scary subject to distinguish, but what are we going to do about it? We will do nothing. Could it be that we are truly becoming lazy?
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