Facebook- Just Another Teen Networking Website?!

One of the teen websites that I choose to analyze was facebook. Facebook
is a networking website that once was only open to certain college
universities. Over the course of a few years, the available schools
increased, it then became open to highschoolers , and finally became
available to everyone. When I was working on my first undergrad degree
at Worcester State College, we were let into the network my senior
year, and I remember it being a big deal. Within the first few days of
it going live, about half of the student body had already registered
for

an account. Having an account for three years I’ve witness the evolution of facebook. Originally
it was used for networking. You would befriend people who you had class
with, it was then easier to get in touch with them if you had a
question on coursework. It was also easy to invite friends, oracquaintances to parties and social gatherings, at anywhere from your apartment to a nearby bar. Nowadays since more and more people are facebook
members the site has changed. It’s a place to see and be seen. People
friend request people that they barely know. “Friend whores” is what
they are called. Some people have anywhere from 500-1000 friends. Who
could possibly know that many people! There is also a function on facebook
that allows people to be linked together by joining groups. The topics
of these groups have ranged from serious issues/causes.



I find that this has always been the safer alternative for myspace.
One of the reasons is because it's built upon networks. As I stated
previously the only networks it has was your school/college. The only
way to join a network is to have a school issues email address. Now
they have geographical networks that anyone can join (however you can
only be a member of one) and work networks as well. You can set your
privacy settings to whatever makes you comfortable, however, even at
most lenient,
only those in your particular network are allowed to see your profile.
Although they slightly encourage you to share more info (phone number)
their privacy options are amazing and you can make it so only certain
individuals see certain aspects of your profile.

Another way teens build their 'status' is via picture tagging. When someone puts pictures up on facebook,
they have the option of 'tagging' both themselves and their friends in
the photo. This links the tagged photos to whoever Else's
profile also. The more pictures/tags, the more 'popular' one is
presumed to be. I mean seriously if your in over 1000 drunken party
pictures, how fun are you?!Haha. The pictures aren't quite like the ones on myspace
. The don't have many of those, this is me taking a picture of me,
looking in the mirror, trying to look sexy. It's different than the myspace scene.


One of the downfalls is it allows for people to be mean to each other.
Some of the things that go on, I don't believe that people would do/say
to the individuals faces. One of my friends actually has a 'group'
about hating her. I find that, absolutely ridiculous . I don't know the
history, or the when and the why this exactly went down, but there is
no excuse. However, when these three girls run into her the other day,
they said nothing. One actually even smiled and waved.

There
are several 'applications' on it, and you can pick and choose which
ones you want. One of the few applications I have (and haven't
immediately deleted) is the Bumper sticker application. This allows you
to post random pictures on your profile, and also send some to your
friends. Some of them are funny, some of them are sweet. And then some
of them are downright mean. People use the application, to create a .jpg file, about someone they dislike, and put it on the Internet.
All it has to be is maybe a picture with a nasty caption. After
watching/reviewing mean girls not to long ago, it almost makes me
wonder what they would have been capable of had they beenfacebook savy.

One of the things facebook
does is it basically publishes everything you do on the website in
something called a 'feed' when you log on. This feed can only be seen
by your friends however, I find this an invasion of privacy. I remember
when my ex-boyfriend "facebook friended"
me (and that is an acceptable expression, any of my digital natives
will agree) I was horrified that other people could see that we werefacebook friends. Only because we were friends for real also. That's another thing about facebook, when people are mad at you, they withhold their facebook friendship from you also. I've had friends purposely delete me because we weren't on good terms. Yes that's juvenile
. I feel the need to add the fact that although there are some people
who will friend everyone. Those are the same people who will 'defriend' people they've had a falling out with. In short, facebook friendship can be a pretty big deal to some.

Items can be places up for sale. Friends Birthdays are announced. There are many good functional uses for Facebook.
Invites can be sent to social gatherings. So the negative features of
the website are far outweighed by the positive. And the absolute best
part aboutfacebook, no glittery graphics that take 10 minutes to load, and in some cases may cause seizures!