The Guilfordian

Issue date: 4/29/05 Section: Forum

Media Credit: www.thefacebook.com

After hearing nonstop chatter from my suite-mates and what seemed like every person in the caf about Facebook, the newest craze to hit Guilford, I decided to check it out for myself.

I learned that it is a website that claims to offer students harmless cyber clubs to join and the opportunity to visualize your social network.

Sure it's harmless. By assessing your friends in terms of quantity, you are turning those friends into commodities. It shouldn't matter how many friends you can count, if you have friends you can count on.

Presenting dozens of clubs such as "Athletes R us," and "Big Booty Ho's," Facebook is offering adolescents a chance to segregate themselves from each other by categorizing themselves into clubs based on likes, dislikes, and personality traits.

While I find nothing wrong with uniting oneself on common ground with fellow peers, I am disgusted at some of the uses this site has been put to.

For instance, one of the special features which allows students to look up high school classmates and scrutinize their profiles, is nothing more than a ruse to tempt college students all over the country to reinstate the cliques they grew up with.

On multiple occasions, I have witnessed members of the site view the pictures of people from their hometown only to insult the way they look and to question the honesty of their profile.

This website is offering young adults the ammunition and temptation to insult others by providing them with information on people who might have hurt them in the past. Instead of letting us get on with our lives, Facebook invites us to pick apart others in the 'safe and private' atmosphere of cyber-world.

I have heard some claim that they are using Facebook to reestablish old friendships. But, except for rare exceptions, what kind of friendship was it if you so easily lost contact?

Facebook can also be hazardous to students' self-esteem. By using this site to 'friend' others, you are taking the risk of making people feel unwanted if they do not receive the request. This is not healthy. College students, while technically adults, are still subject to hurt feelings from not being accepted.

'Friending' is also an extremely impersonal form of contact as it increases the appeal of Internet communication while diminishing human contact. In a society that encourages technology, this is becoming all too easy. Replacing activities such as meeting friends or telephone calls with short notes via e-mail might eventually lead to non-compassionate relations.

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