“Facebook has become so ingrained in my life,” said Rick Pascarelli. “I hate it.”
Pascarelli, 25, a senior at SUNY Binghamton, isn”™t alone. The popular social networking site boasts more than 300 million active users worldwide, more than 50 percent of whom log in daily. However, despite its staggering popularity, an anti-Facebook sentiment is gaining traction.
Launched in 2004, Facebook originally targeted college students. Upon logging in, the user was taken to a profile page with limited functions, including photos, wall posts, events, notes and groups.
Today, Facebook is open to anybody older than 13. It comes with myriad applications, groups, fan pages ”¦ and the traditional Facebook functions. Users publish stories to a news feed updated in real-time telling others what books they are reading, who their five favorite actors are, and other things.
When asked what he thought of Facebook, Pascarelli joked that it”™s his “desperate, desperate cry for attention.” He signed-up in 2007, when he rushed Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. He criticized the web site for bombarding him with information ”“ such as quiz results ”“ about friends he doesn”™t talk to. It was information, Pascarelli argued, that he never needed to know.
Â
Pascarelli said the size of the user base and the sheer amount of information brings people to new levels of socially-acceptable stalking. Users can publish information manually or through an application. There are even applications, such as InstaMapper GPS Tracking, that publish a user”™s GPS locations to their newsfeeds.
Â
“People complain about big brother,” said Pascarelli, “but we”™re sitting down and doing it willingly without the government.”
Not surprisingly, things get lost in this flood of information. As social chairman of his fraternity, a party promoter and a bartender, Pascarelli sends invitations to get the word out on upcoming events. He finds them ineffective, he said, as most college users let invitations and messages pile up because they feel that most of the content is uninteresting or useless.
Zack Kolin, 22, a senior at CUNY-Hunter College, disagreed, arguing that “for social gatherings, Facebook events are invaluable.” He said that when he organized events, the most successful were publicized using event invitations.
Kolin signed up for Facebook in 2006, though he did not think much of it at first. Then he got a friend request from an elementary school friend. That connection drew him into Facebook and he became an avid user. He has since connected with many past acquaintances ”“ one of whom is his current roommate.
The information overload problem is of the user”™s own making Kolin argued. “Facebook allows users to configure their own privacy settings,” he said. For example, users can control what is published to their news feed and who sees what part of their profile. “Because everyone has the ability to make their own privacy settings, it”™s what you make of it.”
Facebook is known to perpetuate what some call a “stalker quality.” In November 2007, the company launched Beacon, an advertising function that retrieved data about a user”™s activities from external web sites and posted it to the user”™s newsfeed. In August 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed against Facebook and participating companies. Beacon was retired on Sept. 21.
Â
Beacon was designed to gather information for targeted advertising, and some users resented being subjected to ads as part of the Facebook experience. But Kolin contended that Facebook with ads is better than a for-pay model. For him, the problem lies in users”™ rights to privacy, not in their rights to avoid ads. “We”™re a society of commercials,” he said.
Â
In February, Facebook revised its terms of service to grant the company full ownership of a user”™s content, even if the account is deactivated. Users vocalized their outrage and Facebook quickly retracted the new terms.
For some, the problem with Facebook isn”™t the information given, but what is taken from the user.
“There is no sense of mystery,” said Gracie Janove, 21, a senior at SUNY Purchase College. “We don”™t sit down and wonder because we have everything in front of us.”
Janove signed up for an account in 2006 and deactivated it last August. She found Facebook distracting and socially destructive. “I didn”™t like having (Facebook) be my main form of communication with friends that I could as easily call or see in person.”
Ultimately, Janove saw her social life change significantly after she deactivated her account. She found herself having more invested, meaningful conversations with friends. Instead of finding out about their day via her newsfeed, Janove was forced to ask friends direct questions about their lives. She believes that deactivating her account had only been beneficial to her relationships.
Without Facebook, Janove also found more free time during the day to produce her “zine,” a self-published, small-circulation publication. She admitted that she would have worked on the zine even with an account, but believed progress would have been much slower.
It is not uncommon to hear students blame Facebook for their procrastination. Kolin recalled his friends temporarily deactivating their accounts to focus on studying and said he may do the same to study for the LSATs.
Janove challenges users to deactivate their account for one week to see how it feels. The experience may help users realize Facebook is not as necessary as many assume. “I see it as a choice,” she said.
Still, most will stay. Facebook has its problems, said Kolin, but it”™s an “extremely useful tool.”
