At the end of the lecture last week on online communities we had a discussion about the habitual and somewhat addictive nature of social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook. At the time I quite freely admitted to the habit but now i can't stop thinking about WHY myspace has such a strangle hold on my daily routine? When i turned my computer on today the very first thing i did was check myspace and facebook. Even though i knew i was getting on to write a blog about my addiction! It doesn't matter whether i am running late for the bus or have an assignment due in an hour i will always check my myspace and facebook before i even consider doing anything else on the computer.
It seems i am not the only one with this problem. Wikihow offers a step by step guide on how to kick the habit. But is my habitual checking of myspace actually a bad thing?
I think it is completely healthy. Myspace just fuels my own human inclination to procrastinate. It gives me a guilt free channel to effectively do nothing. I don't necessarily intend to do anything on the sites everytime i log on. It's more about checking what everyone is up to and seeing whether anybody "loves me". When i want to catch up with a friend i still reach for my phone before considering commenting on that persons myspace. Myspace has not taken over my social life. I still consider the phone to be a more personal means of communication and would much rather see somebody face to face than exchange messages with them over myspace. I use myspace for more random, playful comments when the wall between me and my assignments has gotten particularly high and i am just creating ways to avoid it. Here again, it comes back to my desire to procrastinate rather than my need for social interaction through the site.
In Terry Flews book New Media: An Introduction he makes reference to the studies of Shenton and McNeeley who discuss reasons for why people participate in online communities. One suggestion was the lack of geographical boundaries within the community. You can effectively talk to someone on the other side of the world who you have never seen in real life. I don't actually do that. Every person that i interact with online exists in my own physical "real life" circle of friends or aquantances. I have never accepted a friend request from somebody that i dont know or recognise. Myspace and Facebook are an extension of my real life. Yes, there are people on myspace and facebook that i haven't seen in months but i don't make a concious effort to talk to them on myspace either. I enjoy that i can passively see what those people are up to by looking at my feed on facebook. So i guess my habit of checking facebook in particular could be fueled by my desire to be constantly "in the know". Facebook allows me to stay in touch in a completely hassle free and lazy way.
I don't think i will be trying to change my habits anytime soon. I have accepted that i am the queen of procrastination and thoroughly enjoy the pleasure of browsing myspace before reading my uni emails. My lecturers and tutors will be most dissapointed!
1 comment:
Good point about these networking sites serving as an extension of one's offline social life. Even though I am sometimes inclined to join a particular group or two, supporting one cause or another, I am not all that committed nor am I likely to try and contact someone who I don't know but supports the same cause.
I agree with you that such sites are really no substitute for other forms of communication such as the telephone or especially face to face. I can also safely say that I have never contacted one of my friends on facebook to get in touch. I also use this as a great tool for procrastination. There is nothing particularly special about my page, with its sole purpose basically to check out what other people are doing when I am particularly bored.
Would this mean that the social power of the so called web 2.0 is slightly over-valued? Does it merely just serve as a means of maintaining one's social relations in the offline world? Well, I think for me this is certainly the case. It would be interesting to see if I am in the minority on this one.
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