Certainly you have never had so many "friends" as you have since you made an account on facebook. This is caused by what I called "friends phenomenon.
Suddenly you're on facebook "friend" with everyone. Whether this is in fact a colleague, boss, family member, classmate, someone known from some social event, or even someone you do not know even a little, but you just have a good feeling when there is growing number of your friends under any circumstances ... Facebook is throwing everything into one bag.
In your network there is suddenly a "patchwork" of contacts relating to the status of your employee, supervisor, parent, sibling, classmate, friend ... In the real world you have these statuses clearly divided. You know what information to share at home, at work, at school. Generally speaking, this is not overlapping, or only in clearly specified extent.
On facebook this sharing of information is overlapping on all levels. Boundaries between public and private are blurred. You are informing your supervisor about yesterdays party and notifying friends about work achievements.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
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I was thinking of the same think a while ago as you are now and I find the thing you describe as '' friends phenomenon'' very funny. It is probably not very appropriate that your boss reads about how drunk you were yesterday evening or that you read about private medical state of your boss. The boundaries are really blurring, but the point of Facebook is that you connect with the people you know (or don't know but would like to). So the problem lies in the content you post on Facebook - you should be more reflectional and should be well aware who will read your posts and see you pictures.
ReplyDeleteBut I think the concept of ''friendship'' is changing as well in the case of Facebook. In some cases it even became a competition for the higher number of friends a person can gather. And most of them he/she doesn't even know, but he/she calls them his/her friend. I think the problem is in the naming as well - if we wouldn't be called friends on Facebook, but something more impersonal, like connections for example, it wouldn't be such a problem. You would still have to consider what you post, but atleast the naming wouldn't be confusing. But all we can do now, is to consider what we post and who exactly we add as a ''friend''.
I think that however we call it, problem described remains.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to be really "on the safe side" you should share nothing. And I think we all will agree, that social media just have no chance to work like this, they are directly dependent on sharing. And I also don't think that statements like "the weather is nice" will make social media interesting for its users. Controversy is what makes them alive.
And controlling your network: yes, that's what everyone should do (but no one tells that to common users)but also - having in your network just people according to one of your social statuses (f.e. just family members, just colleagues from work etc.)and though know exactly what information to share and what is inappropriate will have no point in using social media as well, since the process of individualization is making us dependent on connections in networks.. or you can (as time goes by even more) easily be excluded from your share on social capital.