Do You Have Facebook?


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Submitted by Daniel Vergara on Fri, 12/30/2011 - 5:41pm.

I am sure most of us at the EdLab have personal Facebook accounts and while the frequency with which we visit the site varies according to the individual, I came across this NY Times article about how the social networking site, around 500 million strong, is not attracting everyone.

The article follows young people who have shunned Facebook and each offer a variety of reasons for refusing to sign up or leaving. The one consensus in all the stories seem to be a lack of connection to everyday things and how Facebook has essentially disconnected them from the “real world”. Some would only get in touch with their friends through Facebook, see friends’ updates and pictures to see how they were doing and indirectly see that as their way of knowing how their friends were doing rather than keeping in touch with them.

Has Facebook and other social networking sites reached a point where the need to keep personal relationships is no longer necessary? I am interested in knowing the reasons for those without Facebook accounts.

Posted in Public | Daniel Vergara's blog | login or register to post comments »

Francisco Mendoza Says:
Tue, 07/17/2012 - 11:42pm

Great blog, I have a Facebook account. I do think that the social network is a reason why people communicate less, since there is no need to really ask how one is because most of the time that person will write it down on Facebook. One just has to give their friend a call and meet up with every now and then to make sure that they still have that type of relationship. Do you think Facebook can ruin friendships or relationships because of the lack of communication in person for most people?

Kate Meersschaert Says:
Tue, 01/03/2012 - 10:28am

Daniel, what an important article and correspondent points re: the drawbacks and lack of draw to Facebook for everyone. I like Gary, do not have an account. I did at one point, but feel as Professor Natriello clearly lays-out, that the risks far outweigh the benefits. Danah Boyd, her site and The Electronic Frontier Foundation have done great work clarifying the shifting sands of Facebook's privacy policies and both sites provide great resources and scholarly articles exploring potential dangers in people's lives and for the future of education.

Gary Natriello Says:
Mon, 01/02/2012 - 10:10am

There are a number of reasons why I do not have a Facebook account. Among the more prominent:

1) Facebook provides a direct conduit for governments to access personal information which leads to a dangerous level of surveillance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

2) Facebook sells information on its users to commercial interests:

http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/23/exclusive-leaked-details-of-how-facebook-plans-to-sell-your-timeline-to-advertisers/

3) Friendships are too important to sell:

http://www.rushkoff.com/blog/2011/2/25/abc-australia-radio-interview-program-or-be-programmed.html

My question is why those who find utility in something like Facebook are not doing more to help develop a distributed open source alternative like Diaspora:

http://diasporaproject.org/

Jihii Jolly Says:
Wed, 01/04/2012 - 12:48pm

Thanks for this comment! I've been having second thoughts about Facebook for a long while, but it's hard to quit when you've been active in a network for so long! BTW, Diaspora is definitely promising... My friend from high school is actually one of the founders!

Megha Agarwala Says:
Wed, 01/04/2012 - 2:56pm

Jihii, do you think you could invite your friend over for presenting in the Edlab seminar? It would be very interesting to hear Diaspora's story and their take on social networking.

Megha Agarwala Says:
Tue, 01/03/2012 - 6:55pm

Mark Zuckerburg donated $190,000 to this project. Aparently, Diaspora is similar to a project called Wirehog, he was working on before Facebook. But the decentralization made it difficult to handle privacy issues and so Wirehog was eventually killed by Zuckerburg and Sean Parker.

BTW, I just created an account on Diaspora. It looks pretty cool. Its like Facebook with discover interesting people element from twitter (you find people through hashtags). Its open ofcourse so if you dont want your data to be on another server, you can grab the code and host it anywhere you want, (which may need some skill)