Meredith's Blog

Facebook is an intriguing source for an autobiographical site due to it’s relative newness and the structure it has which makes it so successful. The site has unique features which make it continually popular, and with frequent updates it is constantly adapting to the public’s improvements to the site. While the company gets larger and larger, this sector of the public is expanding to reach people in less developed nations as well as the Western world. What is it, precisely, which makes Facebook so pervasive in recent years? And perhaps more importantly, what are the effects of Facebook on us in the future?

To address the question of Facebook’s pervasiveness, I draw on this 2012 study by psychologists Ashwini Nadkarni and Stefan Hoffman. They determined that Facebook is so common in today’s online world for two major reasons. Firstly, the ‘fundamental desire to belong’. We are social creatures by nature, so it makes sense that a tool for creating and establishing connections promotes happiness within us. One example of these connections being established is the band God Street Wine, who were reunited thanks to a loyal fan creating a Facebook page for the group. Secondly, the ‘self-representation’ aspect of Facebook in which we recreate ourselves on the Internet as better versions of ourselves. It is this image, created by numbers of friends and photos, which cause us to aspire to change to be more like our online selves. This is not a healthy desire, however. If we focus on our real life friends rather than the image the public and our friends have of us online, we would be a lot happier.

Moreover, spending too much time on the Internet is bad for humans as we need proper social interactions in our lives, which is one of the dangers of a more connected world. In terms of answering the question of what the effects of Facebook are in the future upon us, there is a vey real threat of inhibiting social connection so much that it affects our health negatively. Dr. Aric Sigman cites Facebook and other social networking cites as reducing the skills of interpreting body language and limits our social skills in his BBC article. In time, social networking will ‘alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and influence mental performance’.

These are very real potential consequences of online networking, but it is important to note that there are also other sources for these issues and the potential problems of cancer, dementia and heart disease that it causes. Too much television, not eating healthily enough and not enough exercise can lead also to problems of cancer and disease. These messages have permeated Western society almost as much as Facebook has in recent years, and have become umbrella phrases for living healthier lives. One such example is this article by Express, a British newspaper. It is clear that we should be providing more specific advice to people rather than generalizations for the entire public sphere, as no person is the same as another. Perhaps social networking will limit us in the future, but so might these umbrella phrases of which I speak.