Has Facebook Effected The Way In Which We Socialise In Todayʼs Society?
Facebook is a social networking site which as been running since February 2004. It was slowly introduced along side other social networking sites such as Myspace, Bebo and now it is the most popular social networking site on the internet. I think this is because it allows anyone to add anyone, have conversations with friends and use its applications to do almost anything. It is bringing many people together, you are able to search for friends and in some rare cases you end up coming across someone you haven't spoken to in years and reconnect with them.
There have been many game applications which many people use out of boredom and a few of them have become quite popular to a point where non-Facebook users have heard of the 'addictions' to the game application. For example, there is a game application called Ê»Farmvilleʼ, which I think no matter how long you have been on Facebook, you have used it at some point, even if you’ve never used it since. This game was made by a company called Zynga, who have also made 36 other games on Facebook which include ‘YoVille’ and ‘FishVille’. The game allows you to maintain your own farm, add neighbours and make coins to buy decorations for the farm. Coins are received from completing tasks on the games and these coins allow you to buy more accessories for your game. However, some items cost more coins than you may have or they may cost ‘cash’. Cash items are not available for you to earn throughout the game by completing tasks and to be able to get cash you have to send in money to Facebook via credit card or pal and how much you pay depends on how much cash or coins you may want for your game. Through some research on Zynga, I have tried to find out all the ways in which they profit from these games but this is their only source of income.
Whilst researching I found an article by Nicholas Carlson, on the Business Insider website, which briefly explains a bit about what Zynga is earning1. Nicholas Carlson claims within this article that ‘While the most aggressive reports we’ve seen so far peg Zynga’s revenue around $150 million, our banker says he understands the number is closer to $250 million.’ This information is quite useful and raises an interesting thought about online games, how they may be so addictive to some that they spend a lot of money on them or that they have become some of the most popular online games.
As well as game applications, they have applications where you can fill out quizzes and post your results on your profile page for other users to see and possibly then do the same. I use quite a lot of the applications on a daily basis, however, I have started to use more of the activities available on the site such as making events and groups. Facebook has progressed over the years and you are now able to make groups that anyone can join or make an event that anyone can go to. I have played about with this a lot recently, for example, making an event to go see the film Alice in Wonderland. I must admit, it was hard to get anyone to accept to the invite as I only wanted people I knew to be there and in the end we ended up not going.
There are a lot more successful events, such as, the Cambridge Strawberry Fair, which has 1,961 confirmed guests. The Strawberry Fair website2 explains the fair as ‘a free volunteer run community music, entertainment, arts and crafts fair.’ This is has become quite useful, as for most of us, years ago we would have to make several phone calls to make an event but with Facebook, as long as you are friends with the people you want to invite, you can make the event and it can be sorted within minutes.
1 http://www.businessinsider.com/zygna-revenues-are-closer-to-250-million-says-banker-2009-10 2 http://www.strawberry-fair.org.uk/
However, these events can be very useful and interesting but a few of them have been known to get out of hand. As you are able to put up any information that you wish and the event can be open for the whole world to attend, some people have made the mistake of showing their house parties online. The Sun has written an article on a teenage girl who pasted her private house party Facebook, which then turned out to become out of hand and the girl was said to be unconscious throughout this whole evening. The article was called ‘Facebook party house trashed3’ and was published on the 22nd of February this year by Guy Patrick and he writes about the disasters the family came home to and shows an interview with the father. This is one extreme case of Facebook events going wrong, and unfortunately there have been a few other cases. There was a severe amount of items stolen, property damaged and they claimed to have an estimated £10,000 worth of damaged. This was all cause by a suspected fifty unexpected vandals and the owner of the house claims that he saw them ‘bragging’ on Facebook and he aims to hand them names into the police. Within the interview, her father says; ‘Suddenly from being a small party for her and her mates from school it turned into a riot, with men in their late twenties turning up in cabs’.
To many people, Facebook has become the site that you can't really do without. Generally I don't think I would be able to get on with my daily life without the internet. Social networking has become part of my daily routine and I think that without it, we wouldn't talk to as many people and we wouldn't know much about what is going on. As Facebook has a message board as the 'homepage', where everyoneʼs status updates appear, I tend to see a lot of what they are up to and what is going on in the world outside of my life. I'm not really the kind of person that would watch the news and if anything serious, exciting or out of the ordinary has happened recently, it is bound to be in someoneʼs status at some point.
Status updates are also promoting tv programs and in some cases becoming a type of competition for them. Many members of Facebook like to discuss what they are currently watching on tv or what they enjoy to watch. These comments can sometimes effect the popularity of some shows, in both bad and good ways. Recently, a good example was the last two episodes of the fourth series of Skins which were shown on E4 on Wednesday 10th and17th of March. There seemed to be a large amount of students watching this episodes while on Facebook so I decided to observe them. On the 10th of March, there was a large amount of comments stating that were upset about one of lead characters being murdered and this seemed to make a big impact on others on Facebook at the same time. There was a discussion between about how upsetting the episode was but it caused a lot of interest and therefore this would be a positive for Skins. However, on the 17th of March, which was the showing of the last episode, there was a lot of viewers that were disappointed with the episode and they didn’t think that it was the best way to end the series. This may have made an impact Skins as from this they can see that they may have lost some interest from viewers and they may be encouraged to improve for the next series.
The whole idea of Facebook is changing the way we live, these days I don't think people have enough confidence to just go out somewhere and make a random friends and they would just get the small thrill of adding someone random on Facebook, who they will hardly talk to you or lives on the other side of the world. There are a large number of reasons to why this may be, to whether they just have low confidence, to whether they just have strict parents. It may just be the expectations of our elders, as I was asked by my uncle the other day as to why I was sat on Facebook on a Friday night rather than going out to get 'smashed' with my friends. When they were younger they didn't have the technology that we have today or the opportunities. There spare time was spent hanging
3 http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2864021/Facebook-party-house-trashed.html
out with their friends, a common place to hang out was down by the railway line, when my mother was my age. They would take advantage of the local pubs that would let teens hang out in the back to play pool. Sitting in each evening wasn’t really an option for them, as they didn’t have the right technology that would keep them occupied.
Today we have a lot more opportunities that don’t involve the new technology but we choose to enjoy the latest ‘gadget’. As being a student, you don’t have many financial responsibilities, paying bills or anything like that. We have more time to spare and more money than the average adult who works full time, five days a week. This gives us a large amount of opportunities to enjoy being a young adult but as you observe Facebook, you still find a large majority of young adults spending their evenings online.
The whole idea that if you have internet access you can be on Facebook whenever you want has become a profit to phone companies. Most phones now have the internet available on them, apps are also available to use and they made a very popular app for Facebook. This now means that anyone with the right technology and with the right app, can now go online wherever and whenever they want. This then brings out the unlucky few who have the 'addiction' to Facebook, who then spend most of their time with their iPhone out, updating their status on Facebook. Itʼs now very easy for people to get addicted to the internet and its sites available and now we have other ways to get to it, rather than a computer, we now spend the majority of our day glued to these sites. Ruth Bloomfield produced an article on the Mail Online4 website which looked into this ‘addiction’ and how it may be ‘taking over our lives’. One line read ‘The UK has undoubtedly become a nation of Facebook addicts, ‘said a spokesman for market research company Mintel, which commissioned the report.’ This seems to be a common thought amongst people writing articles and it shows that it is an issue that is becoming more dominant in the online age. Another line in this article reads; ‘More than half of adults who use sites including Facebook, Bebo and YouTube admit they spend more time online than with real friends and family.’ This shows you that even though it may be an issue that is hidden under most peoples tongues, when Facebook users are asked they do agree that these sites have become an addiction to the regular users.
Facebook has effected a large amount of online users and I think that it has effected the way in which we socialise, whether it being good or bad. The case of it becoming an addiction has been raised across may articles and interviews but this may just be a word that we are using to explain the new way in which we socialise. Additions are normally said to be bad things that we can’t seem to lose and in some cases Facebook has brought about bad elements which make us question whether it is the best site to use. Facebook has allowed us to become friends with people from all parts of world and reunite with old friends. It has allowed us to daily state what we are doing and to make global events for anyone to attend. Even though each of these points can get out of control, for example the house party that went wrong, this seems to be the way in which our technology is evolving and how we are possibly trying to make the online world better.
4 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1176442/How-Facebook-changed-nation-introverts-taking- lives.html
