Today there are close to one billion people on Facebook. With so many people interacting through the social media site on a daily basis, the way we socially interact offline is changing. These changes are actually accelerated by the fact that some people have multiple Facebook accounts, and literally every business has one for the free advertising and marketing.
“I’d be sort of left out of the loop if I didn’t use Facebook,” says Angie Ricciardi, head of the PASS office tutoring program and part-time English department faculty member at PSU.
Ricciardi, who uses Facebook both professionally and socially, has noticed how it has changed face-to-face relationships in her life. “In the past five years my high school has not had a reunion because everyone talks on Facebook and these are people I would never talk to in a million years but they friended me on Facebook so now they know exactly what I’m up to.”
Facebook affects not only personal, informal relationships, but formal events, “I wouldn’t have gone to my high school reunion anyway, but I think it’s sad that they didn’t have one because people are talking on Facebook.”
“I think it’s becoming increasingly isolating,” says Ricciardi of Facebook’s impact on real-life relationships, “I can be all by myself, talking to hundreds of people, but I’m still alone…and I don’t think that human beings get the same kind of contact through a computer as they do through face to face human interaction.”
Tyler Carignan, an English major in his senior year here at PSU, deleted his Facebook last January only to reactivate it over this past summer. Carignan believes because of Facebook, “We are putting all these walls up between us and there’s no real communication anymore like face to face, it’s like we need a medium to feel comfortable talking to people now.”
To Carignan, the social repercussions of Facebook lies in how it changes society as a whole, “For whatever reason, the perception is that it’s easier to put a Facebook comment up than it is to actually give a real comment to the person throughout the day. That’s such a weird notion that it’s easier to log on to a computer…than it is to talk to them face to face.”
Since 2004 when Facebook was launched, social media has now permeated every aspect of face-to-face connections that we have offline. Tyler discusses this from personal experience, “Why is it that one of the first things you learn about somebody is that they’re on Facebook, like when you just meet someone, they’re like ‘Oh are you on Facebook?’ We’re so quick to just like dumb down that first connection, we’re so quick to pass it off to social media, and there it just sits and it doesn’t develop at all.”
But is it Facebook’s fault that we as human beings use its website to such a ridiculous degree that it is part of everything we do? “It depends on the person,” says Angie, “It really depends on how people are using it. You have to have a certain level of self-awareness to not, well I don’t want to say ‘abuse’ Facebook, but to not let it take over your life.”
“I wanna say it’s not really Facebook’s fault,” adds Carignan, “At the end of the day it’s all in what we make it. I think it’s culturally developed that this is the new thing where you have relationships and connections with people.”
At the rate that Facebook is expanding and becoming part of our offline lives, the future seems uncertain. “What’s gonna happen is that we’re going to go through the whole day without talking to anybody,” argues Carignan. “You don’t even have to sit in a classroom to take a class anymore. You can sit down on your computer, log on to myplymouth, take your online classes, talk to people on Facebook, and just go throughout your entire daily schedule without getting out of your seat and like having any real communication with anyone.”
The reality of that future is frightening. “That’s a little scary to me,” admits Carignan, “That’s very odd, and it’s not even like that’s part of the distant future, that’s right now, you can do that right now.”
So what does this mean to those who use Facebook regularly? Is the future determined to be that depressing and isolating? Carignan argues that social media will soon be out of fashion, “I like to think that there is going to be some revolution in the future.”
To Carignan, hope for real, meaningful, face-to-face connections are not lost, “Now everybody loves these social media sites but I like to think that when we’re older our kids will see us as these nerdy goons who still use Facebook and stuff, and think we’re losers for not talking to people in real life.”