The Cool Kids are all on Facebook!
I was not an early adopter of social networks. My school, being a smaller school, did not get Facebook as early as many others, and when our school was accepted as one of the schools in the network, I saw no reason to join. It wasn’t until my roommate insisted that she would not go to dinner with me again unless I joined when I finally gave in.
I have always been a social person, but keeping up with people through, e-mail, letters and phone calls makes it so that, if someone is far away, you have to put forth a large amount of effort to know what is going on in that friend’s life. When it comes down to it, you have to choose to not know what’s going on with certain people – and when you happen to see them in the grocery store 5 years later, don’t be surprised when they are married with three children.
Facebook has changed all that. Now, I can have a bird’s eye view into the lives of so many people with whom I could never keep in touch – or now how to find – without Facebook. For example, I had a great friend in second grade. She and I were very close, but when I left the school to be homeschooled and she moved to North Carolina we lost touch. Through Facebook we are now back in touch, and I know that today she is thinking, “where the weekend went…oh that’s right, work ate it.”
Not only is Facebook helpful in keeping up with folks you wouldn’t otherwise have contact with, it is also helpful in relationships with people you see or talk to all the time. By uploading my wedding pictures to Facebook, I was able to share those pictures with all my close friends – otherwise I would have had to send them copies of the pictures, and there’s no way they would see most of them. And my mom no longer bugs me to send her pictures of random events – she can just see them on Facebook. I just looked through pictures of my cousin Charlie, who I’ve never met, and he is a fantastic looking little boy.
From this post you can probably tell that I only use Facebook. I have a MySpace account, but I check that once a month at best. I’m not ready to join the Twitter cult, but I think I may have just convinced myself through this post that it might be a good idea. We’ll see.
What I’m saying is, if you’re holding back from the Social Networking world because you’re afraid of getting sucked in, ask yourself, would getting sucked in really be that bad?
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As an early adopter of the Facebook phenomena (I went to a large Boston school) I have to admit that I sometimes find facebook overwhelming. I loved back when I wanted to look up what was going on with my friends and actually had to look at their profile to see what was going on in their lives. Now every little change is broadcast to everyone. I even found out about my cousin’s messy breakup on the facebook. I don’t know if it’s good because now she doesn’t have to tell everyone herself, or if it’s bad because everyone knows her business.
And I sometimes feel like I should be up to date with everyone’s business too. Recently I found out that a friend was engaged, I was surprised and delighted. She informed me that it had been on facebook for a couple months, didn’t I know? I almost wonder if she was insulted that I hadn’t been keeping track of her every move on facebook.
I like facebook, I keep a separate Twitter account, I blog, I post pictures on flickr and I have a tumblr. At one point I felt like my internet social life was taking over my real social life. The trick when it comes to being sucked into the social networking scene is to remember that you only have to follow as much as you feel like following and you can shut down your computer and walk away whenever you want.
I have mixed feelings about News Feed. I really like to know which of my friends posted pictures so I can check the new pics out without having to search out every profile. At the same time, when a break up happens, I feel really bad for the person who just had their pain published for all to see, good friends and folks they met once alike.
You are 100% right about needing to back off sometimes. Real life is not spent in front of a computer. Social networking can help keep up with relationships, but it is not a substitute for relationships. We still need to pick up the phone and call the people we care about, and, hopefully, with those we feel closest to, we’ll find out about things before they get published online!
Hi, Katrina, I don’t automatically get the Family WEbsite so haven’t kept up with all your good news, but I did see the HAPPY news that you are now a married lady. Wonderful! As you can tell by my many names that I believe in this institution! I wasn’t going to get on Facebook because I already know a lot of people but am having fun connecting with some very old friends. Bye for now. May
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[...] Katrina on July 28, 2009 As you can see from a previous post, I’m a big fan of Facebook. However, there are some cautions which folks really need to think about when posting anything on [...]