My Confession

College isn’t easy. I know I’m stating the obvious; classes, midterms, and papers have consumed every one of our lives at one point or another. Coming into finals week we reflect upon the days we missed class or the hours we could have been studying. If we weren’t studying, what were we doing? Sports and clubs do take time chunks out of our day but personally that’s not where the majority of my free time is spent. I think our problem lies in Facebook.

Facebook has become an additional limb for many of my peers. Taking a walk through the library, I would estimate one out of every three computers has Facebook open. Facebook isn’t the sole problem in our procrastination; there is YouTube, Like a Little, and StumbleUpon but Facebook links them all together. The social network has become a one stop shop as a source of news and activities. A few nights ago, my roommates and I sat on the couch, five laptops open to Facebook and a show playing on the TV. We are completely over stimulated and I don’t think I could struggle through another round of finals living like this. So, I have turned my Facebook off this week. It wasn’t enough to make a personal commitment; I had my best friend change the passoword to my account. There will be no procrastination for me this week, no status updates, pictures to comment on, or online chatting. It’s going to be a tough week but I think it would be more difficult with my Facebook newsfeed open.

An App to Help You Unplug

Usually, technology-related apps exist to hook users into spending as much time as possible absorbed in the digital world. Now, from an organization called Reboot, there is an app that does just the opposite. Called the Sabbath Manifesto, this app posts on Facebook and Twitter that the user is partaking in a technology-free day. Lest the user forget, Sabbath Manifesto sends multiple text messages throughout the day prior to the day of unplugging.

As one might guess based on the app’s name, the organization that created Sabbath Manifesto (Reboot) is a Jewish organization. Some followers of the Jewish faith routinely unplug themselves for a full 25 hours. A Reboot spokesperson said that “while the group isn’t anti-technology, it hopes people will consider logging off more often.”

One may note the irony inherent in using a smartphone app to facilitate a day of technological abstinence. However, for many, responding to a cell phone’s beep is as automatic as to a friend’s greeting. By using this platform to advocate unplugging, Reboot is approaching people within their comfort zone, which may make them more likely to follow through. In addition, by informing the user’s Facebook friends and Twitter followers, Sabbath Manifesto makes the user more accountable for his or her adherence.

It is more difficult to measure how many people are not using a particular service than to measure how many are. However, Reboot claims that last year millions partook in the National Day of Unplugging. This year, it is scheduled for March 4-5. Will you participate?

Digital Immortality

I woke up that morning not expecting to learn that a classmate had died after fighting cancer for almost 3 months. I also did not except to hear this tragic news through Facebook. My classmate’s name was Brittney, and even though we were not best friends, I was close to her. She was diagnosed with cancer months before her death, but I was still shocked to discover she was no longer with us. In the days that followed her death, I noticed on my Facebook’s newsfeed that many of her close friends wrote on her wall, offering passages and stories about how Brittney will be missed. It was nice to read all the comments that people posted and I felt a sense of comfort visiting her Facebook page as if she had never passed away. Even though Brittney was no longer with us, her Facebook page lives on.

A New York Times Article, Things to do in Cyberspace when you’re Dead mentioned, “Finding Solace in a Twitter feed may sound odd, but the idea that Tonnies’s friends would revisit and preserve such digital artifacts isn’t so different from keeping postcards or other physical ephemera of a deceased friend or loved one.”

A lot of Brittney’s friends, including myself, used Facebook as a mechanism to help with the grieving process. Brittney’s Facebook page made people feel as if she was still alive because everything on her page was just how she left it. Her profile picture was the same, her statuses remained, and nowhere on the page did it announce she was dead. Just as people found peace in looking through Tonnies’s Tweets after he died, people did the same with Brittney’s Facebook page.

The question is how immortal are our digital lives? Is it someone’s responsibility to delete a Facebook account after that person dies? Who is responsible for doing that? If Brittney did not leave the password to her Facebook account, will Facebook provide her parents with that information? These questions are being asked more and more often with so many people now having a digital life. According to "Things to do in Cyberspace when you’re Dead", there are many “digital-estate-management services” that will manage a will, which includes passwords of different online accounts and who has access to them after one dies.

For Brittney’s case, I believe her Facebook page should remain accessible for her friends to visit and write on her wall when they miss her. Even though this enduring digital identity is not completely real, it is the closest humans have come to becoming immortal.

If it's not on Facebook, it's not official!

“Mom, I’ve been meaning to tell you this…but um, he asked me out…we are official now”
“Wow! That’s great!...but how come I haven’t seen it on Facebook yet?”

I’m sure this scenario is either familiar or sounds true enough to be real to most of us. Our generation seems to be not only physically or mentally dependent on online social networks, but also socially dependent. The most influential social network these days is Facebook, which has over 500 million active users worldwide. Facebook limits its users to one of six different “relationship statuses”, and also gives the option not to post a status at all. According to a Time Magazine article regarding Facebook relationships, 60% of Facebook users choose to post their relationship status. Interestingly enough, most of them are either “single” or “married”. It seems as if Facebook puts social pressure on its users to share as much as possible through the network with their friends or with the general public. Consequently, users post their pictures, locations, and common friends, and in addition-their personal relations with their “partners”.

By giving their users the decision whether to announce their new or current relationships or not, Facebook creates this social expectation, which most people want to meet. No one wants to date someone who refuses to be in a relationship on Facebook, while a person who is open to suggestions would want to keep his or her options open by making sure the word “single” is loud and clear on his/her page. Furthermore, Facebook makes it easier to follow your friends’ or acquaintances’ relationships, while also giving some insights for the gossipers in society. After all, who doesn’t enjoy seeing ten “Likes” or multiple congratulating, and sometimes dramatic comments about his or her own changed relationship status?

Other than students following their friends’ teenage on /off relationship statuses, adults also utilize Facebook as a reachable medium to publicize their current love life situation. I mean, it is much easier rejecting a romantic date by “friend requesting” your fellow worker, letting him see your page, rather than saying “Sorry, I’m engaged” face to face, right? In the same Time article, an engaged couple shared an interesting story about announcing their engagement to the world via a simple Facebook status change. After receiving an angry phone call, they realized they forgot to tell the news to their own parents who ended up finding out through the network. Evidently, society believes Facebook provides the best and fastest way to announce, share, track and comment about personal relationship statuses of the people around us. Without this wide updating network, people would feel “out of the loop” and would be less entertained by judging others’ decisions or following others’ achievements. Once again, we fall into the online trap- getting addicted to being constantly connected.


So bottom line, to share or not share?

Facebook, Twitter, and the End of Privacy

A sample of my facebook minifeed:

• Ian Isles just checked in at La Casa de My-Linh.
• Corey Wonderkidd: just had sex! LOL
• Phun Keedoc: Enjoyed the 1st day of the new year. Spent time with my momma, then battled alongside my dear lil Nik, hung with my SPC dance beasts (Switchstep & invent), watched so many amazing acts @ the Newstyle Motherlode fundraiser event incldg the beautiful & talented women of Mixd Ingrdnts. Naw, we didn't win but were in the finals against a crew of 5 very skilled young kids. No shame there. :) Yes, I'm smiling.
• Ian Isles: my dad, nonchalantly, recorded and showed me a video he took just now of my dog humping her bed.
• Jobu Cordoba has been tagged in 5 photos
  
• Taylor Shiells: So, Twilight has made me consider something: Does anyone else find the idea of love at first sight shallow and unromantic? What exactly is supposed to be endearing about loving someone without any intellectual connection at all.
• Lawrence Wong: I hate stepmoms

I remember when I first started a Facebook account 6 or 7 years ago, back when it was a rather small networking tool among college students. What I cannot remember is when exactly it became a social crutch or such a large part of my life. I sort of feel jealous of the small handful of people I know who have never even bothered with setting up an account, but apparently not jealous enough to get rid of my own.

In the last several years I saw Facebook grow. When it began, I only saw friends from school with profiles. Once it opened up to anyone over 13 years old, I started to see my aunts and uncles, professors, businesses, and even babies and pets with Facebook profiles. Moreover, although Facebook alone became a monstrous networking tool, it began to join hands with other extensively used sites like Yelp, Twitter, iTunes, and tumblr. Once the numbers of new applications grew rapidly, I was able to know where everyone was, what songs they were listening to and videos they were watching, what they were eating for lunch, what they just purchased with their credit cards, and who they were hanging out with.

Even the way in which people portray themselves and their lifestyles through Facebook status updates and Twitter seems to have evolved. In its early stages, "the minifeed" had raised some concerns. Facebook's way of notifying all of your friends of the moment you change your relationship status or publishing on their minifeed what you write on your friend's wall created a buzz of discontentment; it seemed a bit invasive. But perhaps we became accustomed to the invasion. Not only that, perhaps we even began to enjoy it by manipulating it. As my friend Jardy recently wrote in his own facebook status, "you can tell when someone has a new crush by how often they update their profile picture, facebook info, and status"

CNN featured an interesting article about the ways in which people have grown comfortable with airing their private business, which can be viewed here