The Social Networking Disease

The following essay by Eve Jacobs has been modified to fit the guidelines of the Commonwheel Project.


It’s 12:50 AM, and I am finally forcing myself to write this paper. I sat down at my computer at 12:20 to get started, but instead of opening a word document, I witnessed my hands in autopilot, opening Safari and typing www.facebook.com in the search bar. It is now thirty minutes later, and I have officially lost a half an hour of potential sleep time because I decided to click aimlessly through a social networking site. Half an hour of my life: gone.
The average Facebook user spends 20 minutes on the site daily. That’s five days worth of social networking in a year. Five days of precious life spent perusing the pictures and comments of strangers and friends. This time could be spent actually talking to people, connecting with people in a real way, instead of fostering cyber-relationships and bizarre web-interactions to which our generation has become accustomed. HIV/Aids and other diseases currently run rampant, but a new epidemic is taking shape: one that cannot be cured with drugs or vaccinations. With Facebook claiming more than 60 million active users, and Myspace more than 110 million, the population of these sites is doubling every six months. The Social Networking Disease has been released, and it is more contagious than ever.
One symptom of the Social Networking Disease is increased attention to one’s physical appearance. Displaying pictures of oneself on one's Facebook or Myspace is the ideal way to encourage anyone who looks at that person’s page to judge them based on appearance. When looking at the “profile pictures” of many networkers’ sites, it is not uncommon to see a chain of pictures of their face from a variety of angles. Naturally, it’s important that the viewer know what the person looks like from a myriad of angles before judging their beauty. More than 14 million photos are uploaded to Facebook daily; Myspace is proud to have more than 1.5 billion images on their site. I cannot make the sweeping generalization that narcissistic users post all of these pictures, eager to show the world how hot they are. I can, however, serve as a witness to a particular incident that altered my perspective on the uploading of copious amounts of images to social networking sites:
Not more than two weeks ago, I observed, from the back of a bus, as a teen-aged girl applied make-up to her face a few seats in front of me. She really caked that stuff on, making sure to cover every imperfection before moving on to mascara, eyeliner, eye shadow, and rouge. She finally finished, a satisfactory smirk coming across her face as she made eyes with herself in her compact mirror.
“You look so cute!” her friend exclaimed.
“I know! Let’s take some pictures,” the girl responded, beginning to dig through her purse.
After a frenzied search, the girl looked up, displeased: “It doesn’t even matter that I look cute; I forgot my camera.”
I was shocked. Despite the amount of effort the girl put into her appearance, what saddened me more is the disappointment she experienced upon learning she forgot her camera, that she couldn’t prove to all of her Facebook and Myspace “friends” how good she looked. For this young woman in particular, it seems that social networking teaches her that things don’t matter unless they can be documented on her profile.
Facebook and Myspace are, in many ways, a cyber-testimony of people’s lives. Not only do users document what they look like on a given day, but also what happens to them on a given day. I remember one instance in which a friend and I were laughing about a funny comment. Once our hysteria ended, she sighed and commented, “Oh my gosh, that was hilarious. I have to put that on quotes.” She was, of course, referring to the “Favorite Quotes” section of her Facebook, a place in which users can record their favorite quotes for others to see. Often times, this section turns into a place where users record inside jokes and funny incidents. My friend’s comment certainly does not make her a bad person, nor does it show narcissism or stupidity. I simply could not stop wondering why she felt she needed a testimony of this funny event on her Facebook profile. The only reason I came up with: to prove to those viewing her page how funny and cool her life is. This hyper-documentation of people’s lives is seen too often in Facebook and Myspace photo albums.
The documentation of events on social networking sites is not bad in all of its aspects. I will acknowledge that Facebook and Myspace are good tools for sharing pictures and memories with friends. At a certain point, however, it seems that people make memories for the purpose of documentation. On more than one occasion, I’ve witnessed groups of people posing for a picture, and instead of saying the classic, “cheese”, they’ve exclaimed, “Facebook!” They might as well exclaim, “look how much fun we’re pretending to have!” The overuse of social networking sites, specifically the documentation of events and appearances, discourages users from living in the moment. Before the social networking came into existence, people could have fun for fun’s sake, make jokes to invoke laughter, spontaneously experience life without needing to prove anything.
In future generations, the Social Networking Disease will be looked upon as the epidemic of the 21st century, a catalyst for the Age of Information. The disease has no vaccinations or treatments, and the end is not in sight. Although social networking websites make it easy to stay connected to those who are far away, they disconnect users from those who are near. Many victims of the Social Networking Disease are locked into a virtual “cyber-world” that our society has created. Planet Earth is filled with beauty and wonder. With so much to experience on Earth, no human should allow themselves to waste away in front of a fluorescent monitor.