Lab 12: Facebook

Facebook and Its Effects on Social Capital

Facebook has definitely come to shape our generation, redefining friendship, communication, and the use of free time. Some studies report that online social networking has increased social capital as it has led people to maintain connections with people that otherwise would have been lost. A study performed at MSU supported this perspective, citing that results from a survey of students at MSU who, when asked about staying in tough with high school friends, said that they have kept in touch with many more friends than they would otherwise have done if it hadn't been for facebook. The author of Does Facebook help enhance your friendships? however was critical of the MSU study, claiming that internet social connections are really just cheapening the term "friends." I believe that the benefits of these cites are for the majority only superficial, and lack any true value or meaning. The cites also illustrate this younger generation's need and desire for social capital "bridges," which I see as hope that this superficial form of communication and cheapened friendship will never fully take the place of personal relationships and in-person communication. Technology has estranged people's face-to-face relationships (note the oxymoron, facebook destroys face-to-face relationships), making people falsely closer via cyberspace. One interesting aspect of the article, however, was to highlight the way facebook communication allows the "poor to get richer" rather than only the "rich to get richer." This is referring to the positive affect online networking has had for more introverted, less self-assured, and shy individuals. They benefit from these less-personal relationship beginnings, which help them to initiate genuine friendships.

In the David Brooks article called Bondage and Bondage Online, a much more foreboding stance is taken against online social networking, and is more specifically in attach of myspace rather than facebook. The article opens with the following quote: "Dude, we totally need to hang out... Erin, you're a [great] waitress and friend. We definitely need to hang out sometime... You rock my world. It was awesome seeing you... Where did you go!!! I haven't seen you in a long time and I NEED to see you!!! Cause I love you!!! ... Happy New Year my sexy friend. I love you sooo much!?" This bluntly makes a point about the degradation of language, friendship, and intellect of this younger generation resulting or demonstrated by myspace. It is an opening that perfectly sets the tone for the rest of this harsh article's assessment of online networking. I like the adjective "smutty" he uses to describe myspace and its users. He describes this world-filled with half naked women and awful communication, which supports and fosters sex, alcoholism, and the continued degradation of our society. In the words of Brooks, it is "a world in which the girls have been schooled in sexual aggressiveness, the boys sit back and let the action come to them." This focus on sex, TV, and rejection of such higher things as books, is simply a manifestation of the way in which media, and in particular reality TV, has ruined meaningful human communication, relationships, and priority.

The demise of our society, intellectualism, and priority is not a result of online communication; it is a destruction of human sentimentality and intellectualism that has long been developing. It is not even an issue inherent to the rise of technology, but it is a reflection of the degradation of the media, which the advent of technology has so widely disseminated. This degrade media is able to have such a great impact on society, because of the lack of American motivation combined with a greatly flawed educational system. Brooks has a similar conclusion, "These prolonged adolescents are filled with ernest desires for meaningful human contact, but they live in a culture that has provided them with no vocabulary to create these sorts of bonds except through cleavage and vodka." In a sense, internet networking is not only contributing to the decline of social capital, but it is a manifestation of society's decreased level of importance placed upon real communication and worthy friendships.