The Facebook Phenomenon
by Shelly Hobbs

Facebook: it’s this generation’s new best friend.  If you are a college students or practically any young adult, there’s no question that you have at some point been hit by the tidal wave of the rapidly increasing craze of Facebook and blog sites such as Myspace.  Students everywhere now have instant and easy connection to each other’s profiles and pictures and can send messages quickly with no hassle.  What may have started out as a fad has turned into a phenomenal craze with startling statistics.  In the Student Monitor’s monthly report, Josh Weil wrote, “According to the Fall 2005 Student Monitor Computing & The Internet study, 53% or 3.2 million students (49% of men and 56% of women) visited Facebook at least once during the past month, making it the third most popular site after Google and Yahoo.” That was a year ago.  He writes “Last year, 16% of college students reported visiting Facebook compared to 53% this year, an increase of over 230%.”

Facebook and similar websites have enabled students to have easy access and updates on the basics of their friends’ lives and occasionally even allow long-lost companions and high-school classmates to reconnect.  It also allows fast communication for a society which is constantly on the go.  In the blur of our fast-paced society where Americans, and especially college students are heaped to the max with work, classes, church, long commutes and other commitments, it’s a wonder that any of us have time to spare for developing deep, long-lasting friendships and relationships.  Thank God for Facebook.  Luckily technology has advanced in order to keep up with the chaos and mayhem of our fast-paced world so that we might have quick and easy connection to our friends and loved ones.  In an era of cell phones, text-messaging, email, and blogsites such as Facebook and Myspace, it would seem that we have more readily available connection with our peers and an even greater increase in community and fellowship.  Or do we?

Recent studies have shown that Americans are growing lonelier than ever.  Sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona recently did a study which showed that the number of close confidants with whom people felt they could share deep important issues has dropped from three to two in less than two decades.  Much of this, they feel, is a result of longer working hours, longer commutes and the increase of the internet. When people are constantly checking Facebook, messaging and blogging, why the sudden increase in loneliness and isolation?  Many factors are sure to contribute to this increasing trend, but it would seem that the use of blogsites such as Facebook, while not being the prime culprit, could have the potential to contribute to the growing sense of isolation found by many young adults today.

Facebook could have the potential to increase a person’s tendency to be more dependent on the use of the internet to communicate with their friends and less face-to-face interaction.  People are constantly adding new people to their list of friends, and the tendency is to have a sense of popularity and inclusiveness at adding or having been added to the list of someone’s official “friends.”    The question is how many of the so called “friends” do students actually speak to and spend time with, aside from occasionally posting a message on their wall?  Just because they are on my Facebook list, does that constitute them as a friend?  There are people on my Facebook who I haven’t actually spoken to in months, some even years.  There are some who I have only spoken to once, and, believe it or not, a few whom I have never even met in my life!  Yet oddly, I know whether or not they are dating someone, what they have posted on other people’s sites and, if they decide to post it, what they have done in the past 24 hours.  Sites such as Facebook and Myspace provide a way for us to keep informed about the details of our friends’ lives, such as if they are in a relationship, what music they listen to and what their current status is (you know, the important stuff) without actually having to call or contact them.  Gone are the days when you actually had to think about a person, to call them and spend quality time with them in order to know them.  You can just look them up on Facebook, add them to your collection and feel satisfied that you have just added a new friend to your list.  Forget the fact that you never actually talk; they’re officially your “friend.”

The Facebook craze which has skyrocketed over the past year has given the benefit of enabling students to look up a friend, find out the updates on their life and post a quick message, as well as being able to reconnect people to long-lost friends who have gone their separate ways.  In this way, the internet has shrunk the distance that once separated people who may even live across the country, but the potential flipside is that people become more and more satisfied with internet-based relationships which have no great depth or purpose other than to feel connected.  In a day when Americans and students are so saturated and consumed by work, long commutes and deadlines with little time in between for building quality relationships, Facebook and various other internet blog sites provide a peephole to the outside social world without having to actually face it.  In this way, the Facebook and Myspace craze could have the potential to cause people to make fewer efforts at developing deep friendships and to use the internet as a crutch.

Facebook is not the ultimate evil and contribution to the loss of deep friendships and increased loneliness, but its easy accessibility and the obvious rapidly growing craze presents itself as contributing or having the potential to contribute to the increasing rate of shallow relationships and isolation.  Perhaps the next time you log onto your Facebook website to see who has updated their profile or who might have possibly messaged you, you might consider actually calling the person to hear first hand what new things are going on in his or her life.