“Are You on Facebook?” Is the New “Can I Get Your Phone Number?” (p. 52)
This is a facet of Facebook’s power that I have personally seen happen numerous times. Whenever I go home to Colorado and go out to the bars with my sister we will end up talking to a guy and she never fails to ask them, “Are you on Facebook?” (Which I of course make fun of her for doing…) I’m not really sure why asking this is less stressful than asking someone for their number because it really shouldn’t be. People’s Facebook pages have information about them that one would otherwise not be able to find out without going out with the user in question. Facebook has allowed for the removal of the awkwardness that comes with the first date. Instead, people can what my friends and I call “creep” on someone’s page to discover if the person we were attracted to is someone actually worth spending time with face to face. I’m not sure if the happenings here are truly beneficial or not but they certainly offer the sigh of relief to those that are less than direct in the dating world.
“One of the key maxims of this book is that investing time on social media actually makes you more productive.” (p. 6)
This came as a sort of revelation to me. I tend to think that my friends are often wasting their time by being on Facebook when we have so much that we need to do. But in the social aspect of life they are actually getting a lot more done in a short amount of time. My friends and I have found that our other friends that are not in school feel as though they are being neglected because we have zero time to spend on them. All of our time is spent studying, especially now that we’re seniors and our study loads have gotten progressively heavier. Facebook and the other social media networks let us stay in touch with them and let them know that we’re thinking about them in the midst of feeding our brains. Though it may not be the channel that we wish we could communicate through, it’s a lot better than completely shutting ourselves off from the “outside” world. On the other hand, social media can act as a tool for finding future job offers or making connections with firms that share our interests that we would have otherwise never known about.
For example, when I was trying to figure out which of my neighborhood businesses to choose as a client for my individual project, I went to Sugar Bakery’s website and actually found out their offer internships. This is exactly the kind of thing that I’m interested in doing after I graduate to gain experience in the baking field and eventually help me open my own bakery.
“As people continue to microblog, and update their status via social media, it often becomes a competition of who’s doing the coolest thing.” (p. 48)
Seeing people’s updates about the amazing things that they are undertaking becomes a sort of fuel to do exciting things in our own lives. Furthermore, our statuses and blogs become records of our lives and can even become proof to be shared with the future generations. This is one of the up-sides of the permanence of the internet. All of the photos I’ve uploaded to my Facebook from my semester abroad will always be there. I don’t have to worry about losing them to the constant failings of computer technology. There are even sites where I can back up my files and find them online later when I need to since the space the internet offers is virtually infinite. Social media acts as a kind of security blanket in this way. It makes me less stressful to know that no matter what happens with my phone or computer that I will always have this alternative to electronically hang onto my keepsakes and keep them safe.
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