Facebook: Our Technological Human Web Essay

In the article, “ The Most Annoying Facebookers” the author, Brandon Griggs, relates Facebook to being "at a big party with all or your friends, family, acquaintances, and coworkers". He goes on to compare the social interaction of this Facebook "party" to the face-to-face encounters in real life by identifying the "interesting people you're happy to talk to" as well as the "ones who make you cringe when you see them coming". Focusing on the "behaviors that are almost guaranteed to alienate anyone's network of friends," Griggs categorizes Facebookers into twelve types. These twelve types include: The Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-Of-My-Day-Bore,The Self-Promoter,The Friend-Padder,The TMIer, The Bad Gramarian,The Crank, The Paparazzo,The Obscurist,and the Chronic Inviter. Griggs explains what his personal definition of the different types of Facebookers includes and how annoying each type can be. Although facebook can be used as a good source to keep up with friends or family some users turn it into more of a diary or life style. Griggs is speaking what he feels the world of facebook is turning into. He states that 40% of Twitter tweets are considered "pointless babble,” and he believes that Facebook is following in Twitter's footsteps.

to be in contact with old and new friends. From liking someone’s post to posting your own

“Our community now has more than 1.55 billion people, including more than 1 billion people active every day,” says Mark Zukerburg, the creator of Facebook, on his own Facebook page last year. As one of the most popular social media sites in the world, Facebook has been adopted by an increasing amount of people over the past decade. The number of users on Facebook indicates how Facebook plays an important role of socializing and communicating in modern age life. Since Facebook allows users to see their friends’ updates and access Facebook on a mobile device, it has a tremendous impact on its users in several aspects. People may ask, “how does Facebook impact its users?” Some people suggest that Facebook creates negative consequences, such as distracting students in class. However, do all users experience these negative consequences? Sociologist Everett M. Rogers argues that the consequences of innovations, whether they are anticipated or not, can be perceived as positive or negative. Since Facebook does not differ from user to user, rather that it is the users that are different from one another, Facebook’s consequences vary from individuals. Even though some criticize how Facebook influences people negatively, depending on how the individual uses it, Facebook can positively impact users through sparking creativity, providing convenience, and creating change.

T. Sawchuk in his essay “Dating and Relating in the Internet Age” tells us about the psychological need of gathering and enjoying information about the other person through social media. For example – Facebook is the biggest social medium that helps to anonymously (most of the cases) find out pictures, thoughts, friends and interests of other people. My reaction isn’t as skeptical as the previous one, but still, psycho-Facebook-addiction isn’t really for me. I’m not interested in this topic and as well I’m not addicted to any social media, especially Facebook.

Whenever I scroll down Facebook all I see is joy and happiness that everyone I’m friends with is having. Pictures from concert, delicious gourmet food, and amazing parties flood my timeline. Each time that I see these kinds of pictures, it makes me look back on to my day or my week and see how much fun I didn’t have that week. It makes me question why I don’t have that kind of life or why I don’t have that kind of money. Everyone who I consider acquaintances have their lives figured out while I can’t even decide what flavor Frappuccino I want at Starbucks. One quote inside the article that sums up my feelings is “They seemed to feel particularly crummy about themselves after logging onto the site and

In today’s world, technology is at its peak. However, there was a time when things were getting evolved and websites were created to connect and socialize. For example, Facebook was created with the intent of connecting with people, but it rather forced people to compare each other’s live, which made some people sad. It became successful, but not completely successful. Libby Copeland’s essay, “Is Facebook Making us Sad,” addresses a key factor in how Facebook makes us sad, according to research and some expert testimony. One key factor that I would like to address in the essay, how humans compare their lives with others on Facebook, making themselves lonely and sad.

Soraya Mehdizadeh’s work, “Self-Presentation 2.0: Narcissism and Self-Esteem on Facebook,” presents the view that social networking is a “fertile” platform for narcissist to feed their egos with shallow relationships and self-promotion. In other terms, Facebook is the new public relation firm. While regulating what is seen, and presented about themselves, the narcissist are pulling attention to where they want it, their greatness. According to Mehdizadeh, it is proposed that low self-image or “vulnerability to shame” are at the root of narcissism, and Facebook likes brings validation for these people. Looking that definition, she has created a basis for her study.

In her blog “ The Fakebook Generation,” later to be published in the New York Times on October 6, 2007, Alice Mathias enters the topic of the most used social networking service worldwide, Facebook. Mathias debates on Facebook’s claim of being a forum for “genuine personal and professional connections” (438) and tries to influence her readers to ask themselves if the website really promotes human relationships. Alice Mathias, a 2007 graduate of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire has wrote several more columns before, in which one of them was even awarded the Waterhouse Research Award.

The purpose or hypothesis of this study addresses the anatomy of the Facebook network, communication behaviors and network composition, private messages and public communication, and the psychological implications of Facebook use.

“Social media allows people to connect with each other to create and share information. It is people-powered communication, an authentic dialogue motivated by a basic human desire to share information” (CIPD, Social Media and Employee Voice Report 2013). ‘Click’ and my message is on its way to my friend’s Facebook inbox hundred of miles away. The astonishing speed of how quick we can communicate in today’s societies, all thanks to social media. The invention of Facebook simplified everything we know about communication. We can connect to people whenever and wherever, sharing information has never been more convenient and exciting. In Shane Hipps’ Article, “ Is Facebook Killing Our Souls?,” he has no intention to impede technological advancements, instead he wants users to understand technologies with insights. According to my research, although Hipps ' points has some merits, I disagree with him because he overgeneralized the impacts that Facebook and other social media has on users’ behaviors and identities.

Narcissism is a multiplex concept and represents different characteristics, demonstrative of both good and horrible practices (Kubarych et al, 2004) that may clarify the inspirations driving social networking sites use. In this way, conceptualizing narcissism as only a sole construct may make us misconstrue the ways in which social networking platforms are utilized to fulfill different psychological needs. Research has begun to analyze how undesirable parts of narcissistic identity identify with conduct on Facebook (Carpenter, 2012).

Throughout the years, numerous of researches are conducted to see the connections between social media (namely, Facebook) and narcissism. University of Michigan conducted a research to find the relationship between social media and narcissism. For the first part of the study, the researchers recruited approximately around 486 college undergraduate students with the median age of 19. Meanwhile, 93 adults, mostly white females, with an age mean of 35 years old, were asked by the researchers to complete an online survey for the second part of the study. Participants have to answer questions about their social media use and a personality assessment to measure their level of narcissism (Swanbrow, 2013). Based on the results obtained, Facebook users that scores higher on the personality test tend to have more friends, tag themselves more often in photos posted and update their status more often (Firestone, 2012,

Narcissism is often perceived as any other disorder, employing too much of something; committing excessive amount of time on the internet. However, narcissism disorder is not merely a problem of unmoderated usage, rather it’s the illusion of perceiving reality in false lens architected by vanity and superficial relationships over social media. In Dr. L.D Rosen publication titled Is Facebook creating iDisorders? The link between clinical symptoms of psychiatric disorders and technology use, attitudes and anxiety, Rosen stated “younger generations… born in the 1990s…show a strong urge to report their activities and believe that their social media audience cares about them, two symptoms central to the diagnostic criteria of narcissistic personality disorder” (Rosen 1244). Rosen statement offers a new insight to the effects of extreme social media behaviors on narcissism. Through her work as a social psychologist, Rosen has discovered surprising new information about social disorder. Instead of seeing technology itself as the problem, Rosen thinks, the problem is located "in the relationship between what takes place on screen and off in someone’s ability to shift frames or genres (Rosen 1243)." Rosen

Over the past few years something has taken a toll in most people’s lives, we use it, love it, talk about it, and check it almost every hour of every day: this thing is called social networks. It was only a few years back, in 2003, when MySpace was discovered, and in 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg established Facebook, and soon after in 2006 Twitter followed. These sites became more than just an online destination, but a way of life. Notifications, follower counts, friend requests, photo comments- all what might seem like silly things that teenagers and adults alike await the moment they come home to check. We scroll unconsciously through feeds and pictures of people we barely know, from the inquisitive human nature. At school everyone is

Some social media users have become more interested in tracking friends’ relationships online than in sharing their own life events. Aaron Smith of the Pew Research Center notes that, in the ten years since Facebook was founded, many Facebook users have become more focused on reading and liking their friends’ content rather than posting their own (Smith 2014). Smith found through surveys that about 25% of users now have stopped posting statuses on their accounts (Smith 2014). To a certain extent, it is understandable that these users prefer watching to being watched. What is more exciting than seeing an “in a relationship” status switch to “it’s complicated”? The status switch alone implies a thrilling backstory and leaves followers to investigate by analyzing statuses, pictures, and potential subtweets (when one person makes a vague post on Twitter, indirectly insulting another person). This type of outsider analysis can enable a relationship to exist publically in social media, even without the participation of the participants themselves. As Dr. Daniel Trottier points out in an article titled “Interpersonal Surveillance on Social Media,” other friends can post pictures, statuses, and comments about a person or a couple without their knowledge (323). Chances are that there is at least one picture or status update about you on the website, and it could be reflecting poorly on your reputation