Tuesday, August 11, 2015

The Facebook Conundrum

I've been thinking a lot about Facebook lately, mainly because I've never used it as much as I have this year. Say what you will, but the social media site isn't just an internet wormhole, it's an incredible tool to connect with others. The social media site permeates so much of what we do and basically everyone (including my neo-luddite mother) uses it.

I've been thinking a lot about the permanence of Facebook.

Is Facebook going to be like MySpace, slowly fading out of view while being supplanted by something bigger and better? Or is Facebook here to stay, to follow us as an internet shadow for the years to come? Will Facebook conquer the social webs of the internet, much like it has already absorbed Instagram? These are all questions that plague me.

Facebook seems like it's here to stay, but that also implies that we have to buy into its framework. If Facebook just keeps expanding and evolving with the times, it'll solidify its social monopoly and the frontier of social media and interpersonal relations will stagnate, at least in my opinion. By the same token, if there's high turnover in social media platforms, the permanence and the few meaningful connections we make over the internet are lost. 

If Facebook is here to stay, the other question I have is whether or not our current social media profiles are here to stay too. I'm thinking about the pictures I posted my freshman year of high school. Right now, they're a cute throwback to the simpler days, but what will they look like to me when I graduate from college? From graduate school? When I get married? Maybe those photos will still be meaningful to me on a personal level, but largely irrelevant to those who are friends with me at that point in my life on Facebook. And as we all know, whatever we post on the internet, no matter how hard we try to take it down completely, is always here to stay. In a way, if Facebook becomes a permanent facet of our society, what we post on the site today and everyday becomes a permanent part of our visible identity.

Those are just my thoughts. I'm currently on vacation in the Quebec Province of Canada, so I didn't really have the time for a long, researched, dedicated post about something current or what-not, but I hope y'all enjoyed this little tidbit of my brain. And stay tuned for a Montreal/Quebec City recap coming soon ;)

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