The face of social media, and technology as a whole, is changing, fast. Now don't get me wrong, i'm not anti-facebook at all, i'm on it right now. However, certain details have been catching my attention as of late. The facebook "clientele" i'm looking at now, hardly resembles those facebook users I was first aquainted with. A growing trend i've noticed throughout all social media, is how drastically the age range of users is changing. I remember when MySpace was the best we could do because FaceBook was restricted to college students, and then I remember the days when people were getting pissed off because high schoolers started signing-up. Now I didn't care that about any of that then, I was one of those high schoolers. However, when I sign in under that FB banner and look at the list of friends that pop up, I am often caught off-guard. I think I now understand why all those college kids were making such a big fuss over some high-school kid's friend-request. Its all our fault. We messed it up for everyone when we barged our way into a place where we didn't belong. It was by no means intentional, but we DID in fact open the "flood-gates" to the exceptions. Now, my 68 yr old father has facebook. He barely knows how to turn on the computer. All of you know the type of parent im talkin about. He's the kind who constantly alleges that the computer "deleted his emails," or refuses to even attempt to fix his own PC problems because he is 100% sure that he will break it, so he just calls you at 11pm asking why the printer's "broken?" and getting really upset when you don't know. But this man raised me in under his roof and provided for me, there's no possible way I can be justified in rejecting his friend-request. Right? However, do I necessarily want him to be able to read what my friends tell me I did the night before when I was drunk? The answer is no. So i'm forced to give him limited profile access, which i'm pretty sure only lets him see my picture. So whats the point? Why did he sign up? Unfortunately he did it for the same reason we did in the 9th or 10th grade. He did it because he can. Can't blame him for that, we did the exact same thing...but at what point do you have to draw the line? When is it just too weird? Example, my mom, who I guess has just recently discovered Twitter, is following Justin Timberlake. Not cool right? Yesterday I received a FB friend-request from my cousin, Austin. Problem.... he's thirteen years old. The worst part is, i'm sure he knows how to get around facebook wayy better than my parents, and there are just some things that are not appropriate for someone who hasn't even hit puberty. He's just old enough to read and understand what people write about and post pictures of, but he's not old enough to handle it. So here I am, feeling guilty that I rejected my little cousin, but really, I know that if it wasn't for us, and our impatience to get in the facebook clique, I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. So keep this in mind, as we grow older, and new technologies evolve, we must make it our responsibility to know our place, to know where we belong, and to know where we have no business being at all.
-a.s.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
From a child perspective I remember all the times I "augmented" my birthdate to get past certain roadblocks to signing up for a site, like xanga, or the countless times where I watched a "red-band" trailer under the guise of an "adult" that was born in January 1, 1900. As much as we criticize people for signing up for a site, the fact of the matter is these sites started off as nichè communities, but given their overall success, they expand their audience to: widen the demographic, and target ads. If anything it's only natural in the evolution of these sites. Though the difference is we put our entire lives online these days, so it is correct that new considerations need to be made, for moderation. However, the flipsode to that is the fact that the Internet by nature is free-flowing, so another question is how practical is putting up barriers or dividers?
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail on the head with this post. One of the effects of electric communications in general has been to break down barriers, to make information widely accessible, and to blur the lines between public and private.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way as you do Andrew. I remember there was one day last year, when facebook first put the "suggested friends" box on our homepage, and it suggested that I friend the mother of twins that I babysit for. First of all, I was completely taken aback that she had a facebook. Then I started to think of what would happen if we were "friends" on facebook. She trusts me to look after her children and knows that I am a responsible and reliable person. However, my college pictures on my facebook don't exactly paint that picture, as most of my tagged pictures are of me and friends going out at night. It just scared me that if she were to see the difference between the type of person that she entrusts with her children lives and the "college" pictures on my facebook, which side of me would she believe is the real me? This also scared me with the idea that when you're applying to companies for jobs and internships, that the company can look through your facebook. Where is the privacy, and where is the censorship? And why do these people even have facebook!?!
ReplyDeleteI have a similar story to Lauren, except I got friend requests from both the mother AND the kids I babysit for. I'm not sure which is worse. Is it worse for a 40-something mother to see your college shenanigans or a middle schooler. Personally, older people being on Facebook doesn't bother me, its the 13 year old on there that I have an issue with. I actually think its nice for people our parents age to be able to reconnect with friends from high school, college and even childhood. Won't we want that opportunity when we're their age?
ReplyDeleteFacebook and other social networking sites have definitely clawed there way into the full spectrum of our heterogeneous population. Recently, many of my older family members have begun using facebook and friend requested me. At first, I was a bit apprehensive to add them, but as time went on I started feeling a bit guilty that I hadn't and then I finally did. I didn't bother enabling privacy settings, maybe for the simple fact that I didn't want to deal with questions like "should I hide my pictures? should I hide my friend's comment or should I hide my info?" These same sentiments have definitely heightened people's perception of what should be made public or private in a cyber world where information is readily available and easily accessible.
ReplyDelete