Facebook is Hot

Social networking sites are increasingly becoming the go-to place on the Internet for youth and young adults. They have integrated themselves into modern youth culture so thoroughly that to disentangle them from our collective understanding of the world around us and the Internet itself would be nearly impossible. These sites have become an online Mecca for communication and interaction. Boyd talks about this concept in relation to it as a replacement to the real world. She makes a strong point that these sites are not being used as a direct replacement to face to face communiqué, but rather are being utilized because there is no option for real world interaction. Especially in youth culture, there is a general inability to connect with one another directly, and SNS take on the role of a place to hang out and chill.

In the mystic and strange world before MySpace and Facebook kids interacted primarily with other children that lived close to them. Why? Well, simply put, it was because they didn’t have options. Much of the time I would say that those friendships of convenience weren’t the best matches; truly there were other children that would make better, more preferable, friends. Back then there weren’t really other options so you hung out with who you could because the alternative was hanging out with Mom and Dad. Today, children do have other options and they are utilizing them more and more. Their best friend can live 10 miles away but they can be talked to and interacted with via SNS. Rather than interacting only during school, friendships like that can be fostered in online communities.

Nussbaum’s article is another interesting piece to think about. What part of you is on the Internet and do you really want it to be there? The Internet is an amazing place, voluminous and huge. Sometimes it feels like the Internet is so expansive that the odds of anyone seeing anything you put there at the very least unlikely. However, once something goes to the Internet, it’s there forever. Maybe someone sees that naked picture from freshman year and saves it, only to be posted again elsewhere. Or perhaps it just stays where it is. Even if the page it was posted on gets deleted, it’s still probably available? Don’t think so? Go to www.archive.org and try out the WayBack Machine.

Overall, I think the Internet is used much the same as so many things in real life. Rather than being spaced out geographically, the Internet simply brings many of the things we do and use to one convenient location: our home. Rather than libraries who haven’t had new books since the 20th century, we have the Internet. Rather than needing a car to listen to your favorite radio station, we have the Internet. (I guess a portable radio would work too,… but does anyone even have one of those anymore?) Many people, and especially the younger generation, are searching for the same things they were searching for before: knowledge, communication, gratification, acceptance; they are just finding it in a different place.