Even before Facebook and Myspace there were internet chats like Aim Instant Massager and Instant Relay Chat, and the only difference between the networks were the numbers of users and their sophistication. Facebook is an internet network in which millions of users sign on to and use this network to find their friends’ or potential friends’ links so that they could visit their webpages. On these webpages you could write your friends messages and these messages go straight through the network and right to your friends so that they could read it on their computer. Then they respond to your message and you would get to read the message they sent you. Even though Facebook is a “secure” social network, Facebook requires you to display a fair amount of personal information such as your birthday, likes and dislikes, etc. Facebook compartmentalizes such information; it displays a picture profile in the upper left corner, ads are the right side, and people’s messages are in the middle of the page. Even though I could add as many friends to my friends list, I do not feel like adding people to my friend list who I do not know in person (no matter how much information is displayed about them).
When Marshall McLuhan stated “the medium is the message” and in terms of Facebook, he meant that Facebook is a medium which has a message of its user and company owner. Facebook page is categorized into: “Home,” “Profile,” “Friends,” “Inbox,” “Wall,” “Info,” “Photos,” “Boxes,” and “Advertise.” Your home, profile, friends, wall, photos, and boxes categories are all dealing with your medium space and your message. In your medium your message is to all your viewers telling them “this is who I am” and “this is why you should be my friend.” The rest of the categories are the company’s space. In this space they tell you that you should buy these products, take these surveys to improve their products, and such. Even though the message might be clear, as in “this is why you should be my friend”, you cannot always trust what you see.
There are “predators” online that pretend to be your friends and in several cases, these predators have helped (persuaded) their friends commit suicide. In addition, some predators, stalk you and find where you live…
Those people who rely heavily on internet chats to communicate with their “friends” should be warned. With over 160 million Facebook and Myspace users, who knows who is really who? One out of seven Myspace and Facebook users had been sexually solicited through Myspace and Facebook. Our generation’s parents complain that they do not have an iron fist and cannot control the situation; however, the problem is not us, it’s them. According to most, this is the greatest generation gap since rock and roll. This is because parents are not up to date with technology. If parents knew how to put internet and program restrictions and passwords on their computers, they could prevent their kids accessing harmful websites and limit their computer playing time. For those who know how to do this, they could set up passwords that popup before booting the computer, passwords for certain desktop users, limit certain desktop users to certain activities and a certain allotted time to play, and even a program that forces you to do math problems every so often. In fact, my dad designed a computer program that would start when you signed on the desktop. The program would force you to do as many math problems as you could in a minute. The more problems I got right in a minute, the more game time I would have before the program would popup next time and force me to complete it again. It was a good thing that I got to relax and play games but it was even better going outside playing ball with my dad or going to play football with my friends.
When Marshall McLuhan stated “the medium is the message” and in terms of Facebook, he meant that Facebook is a medium which has a message of its user and company owner. Facebook page is categorized into: “Home,” “Profile,” “Friends,” “Inbox,” “Wall,” “Info,” “Photos,” “Boxes,” and “Advertise.” Your home, profile, friends, wall, photos, and boxes categories are all dealing with your medium space and your message. In your medium your message is to all your viewers telling them “this is who I am” and “this is why you should be my friend.” The rest of the categories are the company’s space. In this space they tell you that you should buy these products, take these surveys to improve their products, and such. Even though the message might be clear, as in “this is why you should be my friend”, you cannot always trust what you see.
There are “predators” online that pretend to be your friends and in several cases, these predators have helped (persuaded) their friends commit suicide. In addition, some predators, stalk you and find where you live…
Those people who rely heavily on internet chats to communicate with their “friends” should be warned. With over 160 million Facebook and Myspace users, who knows who is really who? One out of seven Myspace and Facebook users had been sexually solicited through Myspace and Facebook. Our generation’s parents complain that they do not have an iron fist and cannot control the situation; however, the problem is not us, it’s them. According to most, this is the greatest generation gap since rock and roll. This is because parents are not up to date with technology. If parents knew how to put internet and program restrictions and passwords on their computers, they could prevent their kids accessing harmful websites and limit their computer playing time. For those who know how to do this, they could set up passwords that popup before booting the computer, passwords for certain desktop users, limit certain desktop users to certain activities and a certain allotted time to play, and even a program that forces you to do math problems every so often. In fact, my dad designed a computer program that would start when you signed on the desktop. The program would force you to do as many math problems as you could in a minute. The more problems I got right in a minute, the more game time I would have before the program would popup next time and force me to complete it again. It was a good thing that I got to relax and play games but it was even better going outside playing ball with my dad or going to play football with my friends.
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