Has Facebook driven social interaction into a corner? (Part IV)

Has Facebook driven social interaction into a corner (Part IV)?

In Parts I-III, I stated the following: Facebook allows its users quick and simple communication on a pleasant interface with millions upon millions of fellow users and the ability to individualize one’s profile information.

In my last entry, I discussed the situation in which the “pleasant interface” portion in my previous statement has become so successful in gaining Facebook an enormous user population because over the last few years, people’s tastes have fundamentally changed. We have seen this shift due mainly to modern generations’ desire for entertainment and more stimulating means of doing...just about anything.

Let us now examine the “pleasant interface” question under the assumption that tastes haven’t voluntarily changed and some other forces are at work. Ceteris paribus, would modern generations have chosen Facebook over the phone call or the letter? Have social networking sites forced themselves upon society? I believe this is a very plausible question to analyze. Social networking sites have not only become an increasingly popular communication medium, they are also a new pastime. It is that known among younger generations that “Facebook breaks” and wasting time “on Facebook” have become ubiquitous phrases on high school and university campuses. Under these circumstances, is it possible that Facebook has imposed itself upon society, rather than the other way around? I think the social network’s user population needed to provide it with a certain amount of slack (or interest) before Facebook could acquire pastime status. Rather than a one-way exchange in which Mark Zuckerberg has schemed to capture the attention of internet-savvy generations against their will, it would make more sense that Facebook’s former simplicity first intrigued its users.

The question follows, “How could Facebook’s simplicity have attracted a stimulation-hungry public?” Well, I never said that the public would confess to being bent on entertaining themselves no matter the situation. Drawing from my previous discussion of the “Myspace vs. Facebook user” distinction, those who grew weary and disinterested in the reigning champion of social networking sites sought (or at least wanted to appear as they were seeking) something simpler, cleaner, and original; Myspace provided a jaded virtual world and users craved something novel. Enter Facebook. It seems frivolous to be discussing changes within the social networking era when for now this medium is far from extinction.

The same cannot be said for our quintessential medium: the letter. Is the letter another casualty of the desire for stimulation, or have social networking sites’ capitalistic ventures forced it out of common usage? It is probably a combination of both. Under the assumption that tastes of changed due to the continually renewed pursuit of entertainment, letters offer little to their writers and, in the eyes of modern communicators, lack additionally in offering sufficient stimulation to their readers. Yet once Facebook acquired a modest user network, it was only a matter of time before its innovations cornered the communications market and put the letter out of business. But is the letter off the radar for good? Once out of favor with today’s young adults, and even most adults, could this medium be successfully revived? Is it possible for an individual to be sufficiently stimulation-saturated that he reverts back to previous communication media? This does not look like a promising prospect in an age when the older generations (parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents) are utilizing the networks for convenience.

A further question we can ask is, “How long will convenience be an excuse for a need to be stimulated?” Who will come right out and say, “I do it because it’s more fun than putting a pen to paper”?

It looks like we’ve found ourselves a new sliced bread.