Unplugged: Deactivating My Brain
Dec 9th
Technology Diet
No TV. No Facebook. No Texting. Can anyone imagine such a world?
This became reality for 26 students at the University of Central Florida. Last year their English professor, Mary Ann Murdoch, challenged her students to unplug and live a technology-free life for five days.
Only two of 26 students in Murdoch’s class were able to relinquish cell phones, iPods, portable CD players, text messaging, e-mail, computers, TVs, DVDs, and video games.
I crafted a similar technology-free experiment for myself. No texting. No web surfing. No social networks. No iPods, CD’s, TV, video games or personal e-mails. Just my phone for basic calls and my laptop for emergency school-related email and Microsoft Office programs. For one week.
Tech Diaries
Sunday Night 11:45pm –
The experiment was set to start at midnight. Before I unplugged from my comforting world of chargers and wires, I posted a disclaimer on all my social media profiles stating: Doing a social experiment for a class which involves me giving up most technology for a week. If you wanna talk to me, call me or stop by my place! Starts tonight at midnight! Bets on if I can do it?
Facebook Fatigue: Is Gen Y Over It?
Oct 27th
Now that everyone (and their mother) is on Facebook, some of the site’s first users are beginning to step away
Facebook fatigue has hit college students.
NYU senior Shalin Patel, 21, plans to deactivate his account while he applies to medical school. Patel says that he uses Facebook a few times a week, but mostly to talk to acquaintances. “A lot of my close friends I call and text message, even e-mail,” he says. “I know I’m going to give it up eventually. I don’t even need it. I’m just on it to be on it.”
Since 2004, Generation Y college students have chatted, procrastinated and broken up on Facebook. So much that five years later, some students have lost interest in the site, deactivated their accounts, and moved on.
Beyond the “Novelty Effect”
The “novelty effect” of Facebook has worn off. “Whenever a new medium emerges, people get fascinated, but after a couple of years it drops off,” says JoEllen Fisherkeller, an NYU associate professor of culture and communication. “People realize the limitations of the medium.”
You’ve Got One New Friend Request…Your Mom
Oct 27th
Your mom may want to be your pal, but should you let her see your Facebook page?
Laura Miller was recently sitting at her computer, checking the friend requests on her Facebook page, including an old family friend, the best friend of her boyfriend and an old high-school classmate. One more request surprised her – it was from her mother.
Miller promptly rejected the request. “I told her I’d have no problem helping her use it as long as she didn’t expect me to be her friend. So why is she adding me?”
Google Images
Miller’s mother is just one in the fast-growing trend of older-than-Generation-Y users on Facebook, the largest social-networking website in the world. There has been a 60 percent increase in users ages 35-54 on social networking sites in the past year alone, according to the New York Times. Females over the age of 55 now make up 1.5 million of Facebook’s users, up by 550 percent from six months ago, CNN.com recently reported. What this means is that more adults are joining Facebook, and often adding their children, and even grandchildren, as friends.
Whether Facebook users find these requests to be unwelcome or simply awkward, there is no denying that older relatives on Facebook are changing the family dynamic. Anne Collier, co-author of MySpace Unraveled: A Parent’s Guide to Teen Social Networking and Editor of NetFamilyNews.org, believes that social media is forcing us figure out how to communicate in a healthy manner in a different setting. “Social media are getting us all to think about things like presence, community, courtesy, and how to communicate and have relationships in and with a new environment,” she said.
Miller, 21, like many of the site’s original, college-aged users, refused to add her parents (her father tried to friend her also) because she believed it would allow them into a part of her life that they don’t belong in. “Facebook is an extension of my life with my friends, my life at college, and other stuff like that,” she said. “Those are things my parents are not, and really don’t have any reason to be, a direct part of.” Read the rest of this entry »