Janet posted here and here. She has pretty comprehensive lists here of what she doesn't like about Facebook.
I already linked to Jess' post about how Facebook is a poor substitute for real community.
And Jon has a post today for Serious Wednesday reminding us that loneliness is as big a problem today as it was in those pre-Facebook days.
Right now, we have thousands of friends who know the Facebook version of us.
Right now, we can distract you from what we want to hide with mountains of tweets and status updates and rivers of words.
Right now we have more tools than ever before to be someone we’re really not.
Right now, we are connected to more people and known by less.
I agree with all these criticisms. Honestly, I do. (Even though, unlike Jon, I don't have 6,290 people who "like" me.) But I'm still not leaving Facebook.
I had had my account just over a year when the earthquake hit Haiti. During that time I had "reconnected" with many friends from my past. When I got back online two days after the quake, I had hundreds of emails and Facebook messages wondering if we were all right. My brother was able to update many people by writing a message on my page before I was online again. During one of those sleepless nights before I left Haiti, I chatted with a friend on Facebook (and then just sent messages back and forth when the chat kept shutting down) and she talked me down from my panic attack. It took weeks before cellphones worked again, and even within the country we were sending Facebook messages to each other. After I got to the States, Facebook was my source for short comments about how things were in Haiti. And I was able to feel I was doing something to help when I posted articles and information on Facebook and saw many of my friends reposting the links so that others would know more.
Here's an article about how others experienced using Facebook and Twitter in those early days.
Here's Kristen's take on Facebook post-earthquake.
It's true that Facebook friendship is not the same thing as true friendship. I realize I am only an observer, and not truly a participant, in people's lives (and they in mine). And it's definitely true that Facebook takes a lot of time. I'll be on it much less when I go back to my full-time job (as opposed to my current occupation of blogging and...reading Facebook)!
But I'll take knowing a little bit about people in my life over knowing nothing, and for many people, writing a little blurb on Facebook is the kind of communication they can handle. And I like the chance to have these little windows into people's lives. This has particularly been true for me during this time when I've been apart from many of my friends and colleagues and students. A sweet student who always says I'm her "second mother" wrote me a note on Haitian Mother's Day. Dozens of friends wished me a happy birthday. I posted pictures of the kids so that my husband, and their teachers, could see them. And my friend Dave asked, out of the blue, why I didn't stop talking about the war (Fawlty Towers humor, and call me weird, but it cheered me up that day).
So no, it's not a substitute for community, but I like it and I'm going to keep updating my status, and liking other people's statuses (stati?), for a while longer.
1 comment:
I totally agree! I spent hours on FB after the quake, connecting people with means to people with need. It was a quick, reliable way to bring assistance. Plus, it is easy to leave a word from time to time - or often, as in my case, and communicate to groups of people. It works with family members who live in different parts of the world as well as students who live close by. I'm a fan!
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