"Generation Why?"

This article was very interesting to me for a number of reasons, but one that stood out to me the most was the idea of people living behind a Facebook wall. The argument between why Facebook was created and what it is actually doing to us is the articles major concern. Facebook was created to connect people and give basic information about each other to stay connected. That sounds great on paper, but the reality of it is there are so many other ways of staying connected with people and being actual real life friends with people that sitting behind a computer and saying you're staying in touch with them. I thought it was interesting that the article also said that Zuckerberg thinks personal trivia is what "friendship" is. That suggestion may have single handedly changed my perspective on Facebook.

I was an avid Facebook user back when I was in high school (2006-2010) when it was very easy to use and a new thing so every body was using it. I loved it at first, but then it got old, quick. As soon as new features were added I stopped using it all together. There was always a lot of hype about Facebook in school such as Who was where, with who? or Who was dating who? or Who broke up for the 6th time? That is when I started to realize how much Facebook was controlling and/or ruining real life relationships. Teens were overly using this site and essentially ruining their real life friendships, which was super sad to me.

I cannot say I completely agree with the article in the fact that I believe the initial concept of Facebook was great, but the way we turned it around and started using it to basically "creep" on people and "stay in touch" with them through a computer really made me not want to use it anymore. I say "stay in touch" because do we really stay in touch with people, or do we just look at their information provided, pictures, and where they are working and say we are keeping in touch with them? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/25/generation-why/?pagination=false