Facebook certainly revolutionised online behaviour in the social media space; in doing so, it carved a very special niche out for itself. No doubt, it’s great, it’s innovative, it’s definitive, it’s nimble and it’s youthful. But it can also be intrusive, destructive, distracting and a powerful provoker of anti-social behaviour.
In this review, I will, therefore, try to adopt a balanced view of Facebook. Yes, I am going to give it a Five Star Review for being a leading Change Agent in the Internet space - but I will temper my views by looking at both sides of the picture.
Do you remember that major outage some time ago, when Facebook was inaccessible for a while? There was chaos! People had withdrawal symptoms, especially those who constantly do surreptitious status checks on their Smart Phones every few seconds. Conspiracy theorists called it a terrorist attack! There was mayhem.
Well, there you have it - the first problem with Facebook: it takes up too much of our time. Even when nothing is going on, we have to check our page status to assure ourselves that nothing is going on.
Next, privacy takes a beating. You want to go out for a quiet dinner with someone. That someone posts a selfie of the place - and before you know it, you have angry friends saying: How could you! You didn’t even think of me! Call yourself a friend!
And last - too much of your personal life is out there, in photographs, comments, status updates, event participation, group activity and other such stuff. Even you don’t know the trail you are leaving behind. Someday, if you want certain things to be private, well forget it! There’s no way you can go back and erase all those digital footprints, mainly because even you don’t know where they exist - all over Facebook.
However, having said all this, one cannot deny the fact that Facebook is such an enormous success because it connects people across geographies, across time zones, across age groups and across socio-political barriers. It opens up new vistas. It teaches you real lessons about the real world. Travelling to Russia? Don’t believe what the travel shows and travel guides tell you. Ask a Facebook friend in the Russian city you plan to visit. You’ll get hands-on knowledge, caveats, do’s & don’ts and lots more. And this is just one example. Intelligent users find many, many different ways to use Facebook to their advantage. I have friends who sell art through Facebook, organize concerts through Facebook, find niche buyers through Facebook, sell services through Facebook, and so on.
And that’s why it’s hard staying away from Facebook. It’s a lot more than cute cat pictures, oddball videos, vacation pictures of people you didn’t even know existed, intros to new movies and music, and completely useless and totally uninspiring status updates(like So-and-so is brushing his teeth, So-and-so is wondering why potties don’t have recliners, So-and-so is scraping dog-poo off her new designer shoes, and so on).
I gotta end this Review here. Hell, I haven’t checked my Facebook page for the last fifteen minutes. Damn!