The Student News Site of Fitchburg State University

The Point

The Student News Site of Fitchburg State University

The Point

The Student News Site of Fitchburg State University

The Point

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Tag that!

By Hollis O’Brien
Joe Shmoe Not in the mood to do homework. Blowing off homework to watch TV.” Thursday at 8 p.m.
Honestly, I don’t really care what people are doing every 10 minutes of every day. And yet, I still find myself logging onto that oh-so-familiar, blue-and-white homepage filled with status updates and recently tagged photos from parties held the night before.
If you’re not an addict yourself, you probably have no idea what I am talking about. But ask any high school or college student and they’ll tell you right away – I am talking about Facebook.
In my opinion, Facebook is taking over social activity and damaging our ability to communicate effectively. It has a mysterious ability to draw us in, until we find ourselves “creeping” on people we never even talked to in high school, or playing pointless “Farmville” games for hours on end.
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook (or “the book,” as some call it) is in fact a great way to get in touch with people you haven’t talked to in a while. But in a lot of cases it just goes too far – and people go right along with it.
Back when I first became a member, around 2007, Facebook was a simple site that gave a brief description of a person’s interests, favorite activities, where they were from, and a couple photos of them.
But now a lot of pages are cluttered with annoying games and applications like “Facebook Friend Quiz,” “Mafia Wars,” and a celebrity look-alike generator. All of this nonsense gets in the way of writing a simple note on a friend’s wall to ask them a question as basic as, “Hey, how’s it going?”
Now, Facebook isn’t just a site to communicate with people. Now, it is a major time-waster and has even been known to ruin relationships.
People of all ages (since Facebook is now open to everyone in the world, not just to the college kids it was originally designed for) spend an abundance of time on Facebook, obviously doing nothing productive since there is nothing productive about Facebook.
Despite all this, there really is no sense in denying it – I am an active Facebook user, and probably always will be. I stand by the fact that it is a useful way to get back in touch with old friends or to maintain a connection between current friends.
Who knows, maybe one day Facebook will fade out and be replaced by a new, even better way of keeping in touch with people. But I’m sure that, with time, any new way of social networking could become just as annoying as “the book.”

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