Social decade: why do people use Facebook?

Few websites have had as much impact as Facebook in just two decades. Currently it has about 1.23 billion accounts created worldwide (about 17% of the world population, including 22 million Argentines, although it should be noted that not all accounts are people, and some users have more than one account), millions of pictures and videos uploaded daily, a film made about its history as Social Network and hundreds of books written in different languages about the good and bad that brings Facebook to the world.

Oriented principle for young graduates, surely Mark Zuckerberg, the creator, not imagined that in December 2013 about 757 million adolescents, young adults and even older adults around the world would visit the site daily you created. But why such an interest?

SUITABLE FOR ALL AGE GROUPS

What made Facebook is to combine a large number of web services that already existed, but separated into the reach of all, in a simple and friendly way, argues Damián Fernández Pedemonte, Director of the School of Graduate Studies in Communication from the Austral University and researcher CONICET: “Facebook in a single platform combines a media with personal contacts, the style of a conversation where you can talk some or all, and they can talk to each other, and a receptacle of the most diverse content in the manner of a comprehensive portal. Especially those less familiar with the technology they have discovered a way to reconnect with family and friends. “

Or as Guadalupe Lopez, a journalist specializing in digital media and author of “Facebook is the message” (2012, The hull, with free downloads from holding http://www.amabook.com.ar/facebook-es-el-mensaje. html) he wrote jointly with Clara Ciuffoli, “Facebook is in this sense a great converging space tools and practices specific to blogs, forums, content aggregators via RSS , platforms to post pictures and videos (such as Flickr, Picasa or YouTube), social bookmarking news publications and other social networks”.

Ease of use (post something, upload a photo or video is very simple, its popularity means that there is a “Facebook” button on most Internet-connected devices) and informal (anyone can write as you like) allowed it to reach even those who did not usually participate in social networks. According to Lopez, “No one is surprised today to add and have friends on Facebook, post on the wall, give it a I like to vacation photo, or share the latest video from our favorite band. But few remember that Facebook was who installed and popularized these terms in the jargon that today we have built and enjoyed so naturally”.

That flow between what is made public to the private life and the news from the world also involve encounters: as the story of the girl who learned of the death of its family by Facebook, or the mother I knew by the same medium, that hits son had been raped, too, a place to post personal things without having to face the direct gaze of the other,

YOU SEE, I SEE

Few remember that Facebook was installed and who popularized these terms in the jargon we now have incorporated so naturally and enjoy, such as adding friends, I like to say or write on the wall says Guadalupe Lopez, a journalist specializing in digital media and author of “Facebook is the message”.

To Roxana Morduchowicz, specialist in youth culture and author of the book “Teens in the 21st century” (2013, Fondo de Cultura Económica), “the 2004 teens did not know social networks. Facebook did not exist for them. They have already found in young adults. In your case, popularity is not due to bad construction of their identity, since they are no longer teenagers, but to other possibilities that give them social networks, especially what has to do with visibility. See and be seen are essential dimensions in the 21st century society, not only for young people. Visibility has become an important social value”.

And while it may go unnoticed, the idea of participating in the social network is to be noticed. In “Facebook is the message”, Lopez says: “the participation of users on Facebook becomes visible, in the same way that an animal leaves its footprints in the sand when it comes to take water from the river. Only the voyeur does not leave traces, one who sniffs the neighboring albums. But just to give you a “like” to a photo to make it transparent registration of passing through there”.

FORMING IDENTITY

Facebook became, for many, a favorite place to express, an opinion which may generate debate, where many assert their social status based on the number of ‘likes’ you can have some post, where they can download their anger or joy, upload pictures of your kids, your dogs, your vacation or sharing links they find interesting. That is, a place to reflect the social life.

Facebook can also work, however, as an intermediary and as such, a separator; digitally supplying physical contact (leave a short comment instead of making a call, make a quick “like” as a replacement for a dialogue face to face) finish replacing the traditional interaction, for many, creates an illusion of connection without it being real, at least not as traditionally known. Not all, of course, consider it a suitable space to interact with other people.

See and be seen are essential in the XXI century dimensions, not just for the young. The visibility has become an important social value, says Roxana Morduchowicz, youth culture specialist and author of “Teens of the century”.

In this regard, Morduchowicz indicates that “since the advent of the Internet the social life of adolescents through screens. The dialogues, meetings, interactions take place in social networks. Internet has generated new ways of sociability youth and teens feel that the only way to belong and be accepted in its peer group is to be on Facebook. Popularity is essential for adolescents. Being popular is to have many friends and social networks allow them to achieve this: popular and add friends, the real and the website, which also added. Social networks help them build their identities, because they provide part of the answers to questions about who they are and how others see them”.

Entertainment center for all ages, easy to use, concentrator technologies that were scattered place for everyone to see, forming identities, virtual meeting place (which often translates into real), Facebook became part and changed, in part, the lives of many people. They know the business, media and government agencies, and consider it essential that its presence there. Not just for 10 years.