February 4, 2004 was the start of a whole new medium for people to communicate their feelings and likes on the internet, Facebook. Since the birth of this website this has been a source for many people to express themselves and stay connected to anyone they wish to. The United States has Facebook largest demographic which is 55 million people (1). Facebook is most popular with high school students and older but although middle age adults are starting to log in daily. Facebook is very harmful to young adults in high school due to the culture created by Facebook. The main three aspects of Facebook that creates a loss of deep culture is the status writing option, Likes, and the instant messaging feature. These three parts creates a total new damaging culture to fourteen to eighteen year old students. "The medium is the message," in the case, Facebook, promotes childish behavior and the loss of human interaction due to the connectivity and loads of information given in the website.
Facebook created several many modes of sharing information to friends and the most common one is the status update. The status update is a way to convey a person current mood or situation or possibly share what they are doing at that very moment. These status updates have been used in childish ways such as to display anger over someone but that person does not name the other which leaves a very bitter message. Another use of status is sharing location and current doings, which leads to less interaction because anyone would want to hang out with that person will choose not to because they already know what they doing and might not want to do that particular thing so they never ask if they want to hang out. Another irresponsible thing that students tend to use status is post pictures along with a status mostly while being intoxicated which is very damaging to their future because potential employers have free reign of their Facebook information. People makes mistakes and do things they regret but having a social media and posting on it makes the decisions permanent. This damages a young adults future in a way that cannot be undone.
Likes were invented by Facebook as a way to share what a persons interest is in. People can like anything on Facebook which leads to a huge swarm of information about a certain individual. Since disliking is not an option on Facebook the only way to dislike something is to like a page that has a title of "I hate vanilla ice cream." Again since there are a ton of information that a person can see on another's page of all their likes they have completely eliminated the need to ask what they like. Young people will always look someone up on Facebook after they first meet someone to get a scope of what that person likes, what they stand for, and possibly who they are dating. Knowing all this information leads to less interaction to others because normally the information would be learned and gathered by asking and talking. Liking on Facebook can create very closed-minded social groups such as liking a page such as "Justin Beiber is Gay" which enforces very negative views and harmful hate speech.
The instant messaging is a handy feature for many but degrades many individual personalities and their communication skills. As as result of this instant messaging and the popularity of text messaging many acronyms and smileys were invented to convey feelings and mood in pixelated messages. The use of "LOL, OMG, WTF, :)" creates a new form of culture that uses less words, which can leak to a students academic writing or everyday writing. This makes other believe they are less intelligent because of their choices of words or acronyms. Smileys are used to show a feeling but it could be done by further writing rather than a colon with a pertensese. This leads to former and weaker version of English that weakens a students vocabulary and their writing skills. The instant messaging also is a source of drama because many can easily spread rumors and backstab their friends over this feature.
Need to do a conclusion i do not know how I want to end this essay.
Vague, passive aggressive status updates that are directed at an individual but posted publicly are annoying, but are these because of Facebook or are the people using the media to blame? Why are the people using this media immature; is it an age group thing, or has our media created a culture that enables/encourages trolling?
ReplyDeleteYou seem to discuss many negative aspects of Facebook, but don’t contrast these with any positive aspects. I think your argument about the irresponsible, passive-aggressive culture of Facebook would be more meaningful if you discuss some of its beneficial roles, too. For example, when you discuss “likes”, you could start that paragraph by talking about how they are a way for people to discover common interests. Then go on to explain why this may be detrimental.
Introductions and conclusions are my least favourite parts of writing. Here’s some formulaic advice on how to do your conclusion:
1. Restate thesis in a different way.
2. Write 1-2 sentence summaries for each paragraph in the body.
3. Combine sentences; reorganize them if you need to in order to improve the paragraph’s flow.
4. End with 1-2 sentences about why we should care that Facebook has detrimental effects on the maturity and responsibility of young adults in our society. How does this affect the rest of us? How will it affect us in the future? What does it reflect about our culture as a whole?
Introductions and conclusions are my easiest part! It's the body I have difficulty with-so much to say! I agree with Mara, though. She gives some great advice on how to close it out. I usually go with number one. Great topic!
ReplyDeleteYou make a lot of accurate points about the harmful effects of Facebook. However, I also agree with Mara. An analysis of some of Facebook's benefits would really balance the entire essay out. In addition, you could try to relate your points more to what implications are suggested by Facebook as a medium.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that another form of being irresponsible is how cyberbulling is a huge issue? So I would maybe elaborate more on your last sentence. Are kids giving out too much information about themselves online? How does pop culture put pressure on kids to be irresponsible on facebook? Does it have to do with pop culture telling kids that it's normal to drink at a young age?
ReplyDeleteElaborate more on the popular culture beliefs, values, and attitudes conveyed.
Overall I think you brought up some excellent points and examples, and effects becuase of this new media!
I agree with Mara on this one, but for me, when i wrote essays i always write my intro and conclusion before writing everything else. i use the conclusion as a map to follow for the body. it helps me, maybe it will help you.
ReplyDeleteI know everyone else said it already, but it would probably be good to talk about good things about Facebook as well. some ideas maybe could be... keeping contact with distant friends/relatives, the ability to create groups and set up helpful things like that for school and other things, maybe advertising as well. I have a lot of friends that advertise their various musical exploits via facebook. I do it sometimes too. It's also helpful in informing people about any important events that may soon be happening. Those are just some ideas off of the top of my head, but I'm sure you could come up with many more even better ones. What you have written already sounds pretty good to me, it just might help t top it off with some positive stuff too.
ReplyDelete