Facebook is on the way out. And, by virtue of writing this, I’m contributing to its demise.
I’m not a student or a young entrepreneur, a techie or blogger or gamer. By the standards of today’s hyper-information age, I’m ancient and moss-covered. I’m so last century, I still have an America Online e-mail account. But I have been introduced to the secrets of Facebook. In fact, I have a Facebook account. I filled out portions of my profile. I have a few friends. I’ve sent and received messages. And, thus, I am chipping away at one of the great fads of the millennium generation.
I’ll be blunt: I don’t get Facebook. To me, it seems frivolous. It’s trendy, sure, but lame. Not useful. Not even funny or ironic. When I see my students sneaking a peek at their homepage during a lecture, I roll my eyes in dismay. Is learning that your best friend updated his status from “sleeping” to “at work” really more interesting than the national security exemption to the Freedom of Information Act? Don’t answer that. But when my cousin informed me through Facebook he was visiting Milwaukee, my response was, well, underwhelming.
I equate my inability to grasp Facebook to my bafflement over pre-teens texting or talking on the phone to friends for hours on end. What urgent issues could they be dissecting for so long? They don’t have spouses, kids, jobs, mortgages and other trappings of adulthood that could serve as legitimate conversation topics. Yet the lines are burning with chit-chat among kids who will see each other at school within hours.
I feel the same way about Facebook. Does a college student really need to keep up with 357 “friends?” Don’t the laws of physics make it impossible to have that many? And if someone is a real friend, don’t you have their telephone number or e-mail address? Or better yet, won’t you see them after class?
To shed some light on these questions, I turned to my students and asked them about this runaway echo boomer Internet fad. They offered an impressive list of “killer apps:” remembering birthdays, reconnecting with old acquaintances, rummaging through photos, adding new “friends.”
Let’s examine these social networking perks more closely.
Birthdays: If someone is a close friend, not only do you know that person’s birthday, you’re helping throw the party. As for all those Facebook “friends,” why would you want to know their birthdays? As you get older, you try to forget birthdays, especially your own.
Reconnecting: If you have lost touch with some high school lunch table buddy, there’s a good reason. Why dredge up fringe characters from the past? Considering how little you had to talk about since you parted, is there really some five-alarm news you must share?
Pictures: Please. Haven’t you seen the timeless gag about sitting through the three-hour slide show of your uncle’s trip to Yosemite?
New friends: I’ve been poked, therefore I am. Yeah, right. True friends are people with whom you hang out, enjoy a laugh and share Jell-O shots while studying the Freedom of Information Act. I offered these opinions to my students, but I couldn’t sway them.
“If I cancelled my Facebook account right now,” Mary said, “I’d probably feel out of the loop – disconnected from society. It’s pretty addicting, but it keeps me up to date with my friends.”
Justin told me, “Facebook is a treasure. It’s an easy way to keep in contact with lots of people.” Diana wrote, “It’s a networking thing. You can find people you haven’t seen in years.”
I listened. I kept an open mind. But in the end, I had to agree with Katie, who wrote, “I don’t know what the deal with Facebook is. It just is.”
That’s the answer. It’s popular because it’s Facebook. It’s a club for collegians, an inner sanctum for the campus crowd, unspoiled by the over-40 pretenders trolling for youthful diversion. This virtual oasis is now valued at $15 billion. Facebook’s founding geek, 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, recently sold a chunk to Microsoft for $240 million. That’s a lot of cabbage, but he should cash in all his chips before they end up in the same Internet dustbin as chat rooms, Friendster, dancing babies and OKGO.
How do I know this? I’m over 40, and I’ve breached the Facebook firewall. And there are millions of other oldsters who have found the trail to the private beach. Now “Microsoft” Gates has muscled in. Let’s face it, snakes are about to spoil your Eden, Gates – and, even worse, so are your parents.
Mike Perlstein is a journalism
professor in the School of Mass Communication.
