Week 1

Week 1 question

I personally use Facebook. I engage with it fairly regularly, mostly because I like to see what all my friends and family are up to and to be perfectly honest it is a great way to keep in touch with people who I am ‘lazy’ to contact in other ways. I think it is a great tool to see what people are up to especially in instances like mine where I normally wouldn’t see many people who I went to school with, either because they have moved away or we weren’t the sort of people who kept in touch. But with Facebook, it’s easy enough to add people as a friend (I only add people I know) and see what they are up to. That way, we don’t have to wait till our ten year reunion to see what everyone has been doing with themselves.

I do however, get annoyed at the people who I have on my friends list, that only post attention seeking material. This is one of my Facebook pet hates. It is a way for people to gain unnecessary attention and not deal with things in ‘real-life’. Instead of talking to someone in person about (for example) the loss of a family member, people choose to put statuses on Facebook such as a mere ‘RIP’. This consequently leaves the status open to nosy people who want to know who died (instead of the status updater informing people of this information, which in itself is also seeking more attention) and then once people know who has passed away, they post how sorry they feel for the status updater. I think using such events for attention seeking is quite shallow and not very mature. I have no problem with people posting that they have lost a loved one but there are way to word it, that can make them seem more caring and less attention seeking.

Another thing I find irritating about Facebook is that the current layout of the website makes every single click of a ‘like’ or comment on a photo, visible to everyone on that person’s friends list, no matter who or what page they have interacted with. I am interested when people interact with me, but I do not need to know every single photo that all my friends ‘like’ or if a friend of mine has commented on a photo of a friend of theirs who is not friends with me.

Other than those couple of foibles, I think Facebook is a great tool for social communication and interaction.