Inevitably, if you ask that question to just about any college age student, they will say "yes." Facebook has become the primary way that students in college and high school communicate with each other. While many other demographics use Facebook and studies have shown that the site's core market of 18-34 year-olds is down, the site was started as a way for students in college to network. So pervasive has Facebook become that it is now a way in which people determine how popular they are and the primary way in which they interact with most of their friends.
It used to be that to talk to a friend to to relay a message, you had to either call them on the phone and actually speak to them, or meet them in person and actually see them. However, with the invention of Facebook, you can write a wall post in a matter of seconds. The site, however much I may like it, has drastically reduced the face-to-face time we spend with our peers. It has made a legitimate relationship out of a "friend request" and effectively reduced the sanctity of the old-time friendship.
It seems now that events are only legitimate if they're posted on Facebook. For example, when a boyfriend and a girlfriend break up, it becomes "official" once their relationship statuses on Facebook read "single." Some go so far as to say that if you're not friends on Facebook, you can't be friends in real life. I find this ridiculous. Being friends with someone on Facebook means that they have access to your pictures (which is arguably what most college aged men and women go on Facebook to look at). It does not necessarily mean that you share the connection and mutual trust required to have a friendship. It simply means that you have yet another hyperlink to click on when you're surfing the web.
In a recent Fortune Magazine article, Mark Zuckerberg expresses his wish that Facebook become the only social utility and networking site and that it eclipse the use of the telephone, email, and other methods of communication. Essentially, in Zuckerberg's world, we'll all be glued to our Facebook accounts anxiously awaiting wall posts, messages, and instant messages from friends, families, colleagues, and even strangers...
It is disconcerting to me that a website that started out as a way to keep in touch with people has become a way to define our society. I have 388 friends on Facebook. I can say with absolute confidence that I am not friends with 388 people in real life. I probably don't even know half of those people or haven't spoken to them in ages. However, it is this number or the number of photos you have tagged, or the number of events you get invited to that defines your popularity. Yet, right now (despite Zuckerberg's intentions) it is just a website, and how can a website define us better than we ourselves can?
As a final thought, my friend has 1,331 friends, so if you look at it purely by the numbers, is she almost four times as "cool" as me. I would like to think not.
Whether Facebook will eventually become the only social and networking utility our society uses remains to be seen. It may fizzle away in popularity like AOL's Instant Messenger or it may continue its meteoric rise. All that is certain now is that it is a powerful tool for social definition and should we let it continue to define our self-image and the way we relate to society, it could be extremely damaging.
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