The world is constantly changing around us and as humans we are always doing whatever we can to keep up with it. Changes can be bad or good for us, but sometimes we don’t realize the changes happening until its already too late. A little over four years ago, a website was created to allow people to communicate easier with others, and it has now become a craze. This very popular website called Facebook, also known as Koobecaf, was originally created for college students, but has now spread to everyone.
Facebook was launched in February 2004 from a Harvard dorm room, and by December it reached nearly 1 million active users. It is used to keep up with friends and family, share unlimited photos and videos, control privacy online, and reconnect with old classmates. There are over 55,000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks, with a general growth of more than one hundred million active users, and it is the forth most trafficked website in the world (comScore). One of Facebook’s goals is to offer their site in as many languages as possible, as quickly as possible, and so far in about five months they have released the site in more than fifteen languages.
The reason Facebook is so popular is because people are able to communicate with others with out talking face to face, which some people find hard to do. There are several ways to communicate with others, whether it is through messages, status, chat, profile, photos, groups, notes, gifts, etc. The thing about Facebook is that you can communicate with people without actually talking directly to them, for example, people can change their status to say how they feel, what they are doing, or whatever they want. Some people find more courage to talk to people or say things they normally can’t say to someone’s face on Facebook, and the great thing is you don’t have to talk to someone if you don’t want to, like you are obligated to do so in person.
This leads to another point, that people can express themselves through Facebook in many ways, whether it be their true selves or not. People have control over how others view them, which allows them to be whoever they want to be. If you don’t want someone to know something about you, then you can limit what they see, or not even be their friend. It enables you to create your own world aside from the real world, one that might make you more comfortable and happy, which can cause an addiction.
Many people are addicted to Facebook and the new culture it has formed for communication. We all communicate in some way every single day and Facebook has created this updated version of it to keep us interested. This change has caused interactions between people to grow, and personally I talk to more people on Facebook than I do in person or on the phone, because it is more convenient. Even though I didn’t want to get involved with the new and improved way of communication, some how I got sucked in like millions of other people. Some may not understand Facebook or want to take part of it, but as you can see it has a cultural relativism to America also known as Nacirema, which attracts many people, and just might corrupt you if it hasn’t already!