Research trials and tribulations

By Matthew Gillis

After my post last week, I started thinking more about Facebook and its implications on society.

I went straight to Google (obviously). I searched “effects of social networking on society” and glanced at the first sentence or two of each article, returning to Google when necessary.

Quickly, I selected “The Health Effects of Social Networking” by Robert Mackey from The New York Times, not necessarily because I read the entire article and found it useful (because I didn’t), but because the first two sentences seemed promising, and it’s from a credible source. After actually reading the article, I found that it discusses the potentially harmful consequences of the constant stimulation qualities of social networking sites on the brain.

Immediately I thought of the “skimming activity,” which Nicholas Carr describes as the process of hopping from one source to another on the Internet without returning to the previous ones due to a decreased attention span in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” That’s just what I had done. Was my mind no longer capable of concentrating long enough to read an article online?

Next, I turned to Google Scholar. I became extremely frustrated, because I was getting no articles that pertained to social networking, even though I had only spent about five minutes searching.

Finally, searching “Facebook,” I came across an article, “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends:’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites,” which discusses the correlation between Facebook and psychological well-being. For research purposes, I find this article useful in providing an opposing argument for The New York Times article.

Lastly, I turned to Loyola’s library resources for research help. Again, I became frustrated with how difficult (in comparison to Google) it was to find relevant articles. It took about ten minutes to find a useful article using the search “effects of Facebook on society,” which is by Zizi Papacharissi and describes a comparative analysis of several social networks and the way privacy shapes self-presentation. This article provides an interesting outlook on the way social networking sites shape our identities in society.

Throughout my research, I found myself searching for articles that reflected my current attitudes toward social networks, which confirms Douglass Rushkoff’s idea in Program or be programmed: Ten commands for a digital age: “…we overvalue our own opinions on issues about which we are ill informed, and undervalue those who are telling us things that are actually more complex than they look on the surface” (66). Not only was I facing the struggle of a reduced attention span, but I was also avoiding learning anything new about the particular subject.

However, I did learn something.

Steve Kolowich’s article, “What Students Don’t Know” is accurate in saying that students overuse Google and don’t know how to properly use scholarly search engines. I’m not claiming to know the answer to what has caused this new lack of concentration and avoidance of effort, but until these search engines are as efficient and easy-to-use as Google, I don’t see myself or other students switching loyalties.

When it comes to getting knowledge in the age of Google, we’re impatient and lazy.

Facebook, please be perfect

By Matthew Gillis

A perfect Facebook would be one that would not have let me post those angry “I-hate-the-world” statutes when I was 16. It would be a site that would have automatically deleted those God-awful pictures of me sleeping in public (with my mouth wide open, of course) the minute they were uploaded.

But I think a utopian Facebook would also include unlimited privacy settings, unflawed access to communication, and, of course, Words With Friends without advertisements.

After reading Fred Turner’s “How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology,” I found myself agreeing to his idea that new technologies always generate utopian hopes for its users. The reason I stopped using MySpace (with much reluctance) and started using Facebook was built on the belief that Facebook could solve the problems Myspace had, giving me, and every other pubescent eighth grader, hope for a utopian social network.

Merriam-Webster’s first definition of utopia reads, an imaginary and indefinitely remote place.

Imaginary. As I now know, a perfect Facebook is imaginary.

With the availability of digital cameras, being able to click a button has given everyone and his or her grandmother the ability to be a “photographer,” and now Facebook has given everyone the opportunity to be a publisher. But just because we can take pictures and we can publish them on this dystopian site doesn’t mean we should. I mean, we all have that Facebook friend we choose to keep “friended” due to his or her drunken Friday night pictures that we love to stalk.

I know that a Facebook free of flaws has the potential to connect people all over the world without negative consequence. But I also know that the dystopian Facebook we have today has the potential to create another technopanic, explained by Alice E. Marwick in “To Catch a Predator? The MySpace Moral Panic,” due to it’s ability to ruin relationships, careers, and our chances of ever having a clear slate for the future with just one click of a camera.

Just remember that until Facebook becomes a perfect place where the pictures of you sleeping with your mouth open or the ones of you passed out with “stupid” Sharpie-d across your forehead automatically delete, your utopian hopes are far from reality.