ABC News on Campus reporter Lauren McGaha blogs:
You hear it all the time. Social media is the fastest growing technology connecting you to the rest of the world. And if you’re a college student, you know how popular it is. How many people do you know who don’t have aFacebook page? Be honest. How often do you sit through your 90-minute lecture class without updating a status or checking out photos from last Thursday night?
Well, it turns out some college students are done with the constant barrage of Facebook e-mails, friend requests and Farmville updates. And no longer do they need learn who is dating and which couples are over via relationship-status newsfeeds. Yes. In a world where everyone has one . . . they have deactivated. One such student is Eric Feld, a graduate student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He deactivated his Facebook page in January.
“Believe it or not, life is just fine without Facebook,” Feld said. “I have noticed that I have become more productive, and I feel like I am performing better with my classwork.”
Feld says Facebook was one of the biggest distractions from school. But that’s not the only reason he decided to stop using the site.
“In total, I had maybe 1,000 friends,” he said. “Like everyone else I know, my friend list also had a ton of random people that I'd met maybe one time, people who were friends of an old girlfriend, or that just happened to have the same name as me. No offense to any of them, they just weren't worth the distraction. I realized that the people I'm really close to already know more about me than I can even list on Facebook.”
Sadie Cooke, a junior business major at Clemson University, decided to give up her Facebook account last June after realizing it was the biggest distraction in her life.
“I was consumed with it,” Cooke said. “I checked it too many times every day, to the point where I would lose count.”
Cooke says she spent hours on Facebook before deactivating her account, checking it nearly every time she was near a computer. Now she works on cultivating more personal relationships.
“All I really knew about people was what they decided to present on Facebook,” Cooke said. “Rather than calling someone or spending some quality time with a person, I would just write on their wall. Now, I have a lot more time to be intentional about my relationships with other people.”
But giving up Facebook isn’t as easy as these students make it seem. In fact, Feld says he felt quite a backlash from his friends at first.
“When I told them that I was deactivating, they treated me like I was committing some sort of heinous crime,” Feld said. “I had at least three friends lobby strongly for me to stay on by offering to take my account password and change it just so that I wouldn't deactivate. Even my mom was upset, because she said that she was going to miss getting to see me every day!”
Cooke also had to face her friends about the decision.
“They were not very happy and didn't really understand why I did it,” she said. “I lost touch with certain friends, which showed the depth in those relationships.”
For Feld, it’s been nearly five months. But he says he’s happy with his decision.
“Honestly, I don't really miss it,” he said. “Looking back, there was nothing really exciting about Facebook to begin with – nothing more exciting than maintaining meaningful communication in real life at least. I really feel good knowing that a website isn't a major part of my life and my day-to-day routine.”
McGaha, Lauren. “Deactivated: College Students Giving up Facebook… By Choice.” Blogs. Abcnews.com. Abc News. Web. 27 April 2010.
While this blog posting was very inspirational, it was also very one-sided. It highlights the negative affects of facebook, explaining that it was a distraction and detracted from "cultivating personal relationships."
ReplyDeleteWhat about all the long distance relationships made possible through easy and frequent facebook communication? What about staying in touch with old friends through facebook-chat and inbox messages?
I definitely agree with what Mikaela is saying about the negative portrayal of Facebook in this article, but the author has a great point. I'm definitely one of the people who spends too much time on Facebook, and lately I've been trying to figure out how to cut down my time online so I can completely my schoolwork in a more timely fashion. Despite this, I wouldn't be doing myself any favors by completely cutting myself off from the site. Humans need some sort of social interaction to feel fulfilled, and if you can't see someone on a frequent basis since they live far away, sending messages to them online is the next best thing. Based on my experiences so far, it seems meaningful relationships can be kept if online and face to face communication are balanced out. After all, you have to be friends with an actual person, not their Facebook page.
ReplyDeleteI was one of the latecomers to Facebook. I made one in May of my Freshman year in 2007. Within a month, I felt a lot more connected with people, and I even started to become less depressed, less like everybody hated me. I felt like people actually liked me. I was able to keep in touch with people I met at various places, and it's always fun to randomly talk with people about this picture or that post. I'm still not in FarmVille, and absolutely never will be. That ain't gonna happen. Yes, Facebook does take up a lot of time, but who cares? I would probably end up dying of boredom without Facebook. Facebook doesn't keep anybody from work. If it wasn't Facebook, it's televison, or a book, or that little speck of dust flying around the room. The problem isn't Facebook. It's the lack of desire to do the meaningless work we get from school.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this particular article feels very one sided. This example of discourse appears very convincing and coercive at first, but it becomes less persuasive as the reader realizes there is no counter-argument. There is nothing in the article from stopping me from thinking, "My friends live in Pittsburgh, I don't have their phone numbers, and Facebook is the only way to maintain contact with them." There is no way I'm giving up my account because the article didn't offer alternatives to what people should do if they're in a long distance friendship. This might say something about discourse. Discourse, as opposed to a well written argument, is focused on only one side when attempting to persuade. Post-modern discourse does not offer a counter argument; it only mentions one side. In this way, discourse in the forms of media are less convincing than well thought out arguments that consider both sides of a problem.
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