I think Facebook has been both a blessing and the existence of my demise. Ever sense I started using Facebook I have struggled with the dilemma of confirming friend requests or ignoring them. There are the friend requests in which you thought you would never hear from again, and are eager to see what they have been up to, and those you wish you would never hear from again. Is it socially unacceptable to ignore a request? What if the chances of you running into them at the grocery store are high? What then? Although I’ve never been confronted for not accepting someone, there are the lingering requests that I’m just not sure what to do with that stay in my “request” box for days and weeks until I ultimately decide either to accept them out of guilt or obligation, and those that I somehow manage to justify to ignore. And there are the ones that send multiple requests after I managed to justify that I can’t remember that person well enough from high school to want to reconnect etc etc. Oh, and then there are those that I’ve accepted, who post non-stop, and am tempted to hide out of annoyance for their unnecessary updates.
Has this social networking just became another source of addiction and attempt at moving us (people) further and further away from real face to face contact? Well maybe I’m just made for this modern day technological way of communicating with people or something. Not to mention the corruption of personal information being distributed by Facebook to who knows who. And what about the pictures we all post? Where do they really go? It is kind of creepy to think that friends of friends of friends have access to snap shots of my life. And what about the people who frequent Facebook but never write anything, but then make some comment to you in person about a picture they saw of you.
Funny story is I’m logged onto Facebook right now as I write, and an old college buddy just posted how he is addicted to Facebook and has nothing better to do while visiting his parents then constantly is on it. Ha, just proves my point that social networking is weird. With that, there have been some benefits to my break down of socially influenced pressure to conform. I have appreciated the few friends I lost contact many years ago, who have reappeared in my life. But the question still is, do the benefits outweigh the coasts? Do I confirm or ignore?
I like this post, I have thought of the same things...it's also interesting to think about the fact that face book and other social networking sites allow you to delete friends, it brings up the concept of friendship and how they end face to face compared to a simple delete button on a website. I have stopped looking at social networking sites as places for just me and my close friends but have opened up to people that I network with and might need to get in touch with. There's always the hide button for those pesky bulky posts.
ReplyDelete:)