Reading people like an open Facebook
It never ceases to amaze me how seldom people seem to put any thought into how they use a new technology solution, or how open it may be to abuse of one kind or another; Take for example the current craze that is sweeping the globe, the phenomenon known as Facebook.
I, for one, have not heard so many people talking about a single specific subject since the dark days of the early part of the new millennium, when try as you might, every single conversation eventually wound its way around to the goings on of 12 boring individuals whose most exciting moment was when one defecated in the garden on live TV.
Okay, so Facebook is somewhat more useful than Ferdie, Bad Brad and the rest of the Big Brother crew ever were, but the principle remains the same – one of the first questions you get asked at social gatherings these days is: “Are you on Facebook?”
No, I’m not as a matter of fact.
I work for a living and barely have enough time in the day to complete the tasks that bring in the bacon. I certainly do not have time to waste ‘poking’ people in order to get them to be my ‘friend’.
And anyway, I’m totally paranoid about my privacy. I have fears over a lack of privacy and even though I’m not American, I get worked up about ‘Dubya’ widening the legal reach for wiretapping, and about the way the Patriot Act has reduced US civil liberties.
Yet this doesn’t seem to bother Facebookers one bit. Many may be fearful of phishing and of having their private banking details accessed by hackers, but they seem to think nothing of spilling the beans on their hopes, fears, dreams, likes, dislikes, love affairs and so on to their ‘friends’ on the site – as if anyone who truly wanted to wouldn’t be able to access such information, even if they weren’t designated as a ‘friend’.
Facebook’s privacy controls serve to encourage users to reveal more about themselves within their approved circle of friends than they would do on the wide-open web, posting cell phone numbers, revealing political loyalties or showing changes in their dating status, despite the fact that most of them would baulk at offering such information readily even to someone with official status, such as a policeman or census taker.
So what is it about this virtual voyeurism that drives people to post comments, photos and videos about their own lives while keeping tabs on what their network of online friends are up to?
What is it about this virtual community that drives people to spend so much time on arbitrary issues, to the point that many local companies are beginning to follow their international counterparts in blocking workers’ access to the site.
I believe it is perfectly understandable that something such as Facebook will only have a negative effect on productivity, despite some experts’ claims that it holds huge potential as a business tool.
One such expert says that it allows a user to find the right person in a company very quickly, so many people are now using Facebook as a means of contacting people for the workplace.
But of course, no one mentions the dark side to this equation – the fact that anything as popular as Facebook, with as strong a following in the youth market, will attract its share of bad people, even potential paedophiles, on the lookout for youngsters to ‘groom’ while claiming to be a ‘friend’.
Research suggests that Facebook’s 31 million active users spend an average of 20 minutes a day interacting with their ‘friends’. I know different, because informal conversations with colleagues about the site suggest that it is more like hours a day that people spend updating their profiles and touching base with other users.
I simply cannot understand the phenomenon. Surely that many people don’t have that much time on the hands to spare performing what is essentially a waste of time task when they could be doing something genuinely productive.
It’s as bad as spending half your day in the cyber world of Second Life.
But discussing how sad people’s lives must be if they have to live vicariously through some virtual avatar in a non-existent world is a subject for another day – right now I have something productive to go and do in the real world…
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