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?
To Friend or to Follow?
Nov 24th
Danielle Simon, a college student at Colombia University, is obsessed with Twitter. The 23-year-old has over 6,000 tweets posted since she started her account two years ago. Simon tweets multiple times per hour about her day, posting pictures and boasting of her run-ins with celebrities. But just because she does all this, doesn’t mean any of her friends read it. “I know that my friends are on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean they’re looking at my tweets,” she said. “We mostly follow celebrities and use Twitter as more of a scrapbook to commemorate that.”
While Twitter captured some eccentric users like Simon, experts say that Twitter isn’t intended for Generation Y. “I think Twitter is targeting people over 25 years old,” said Daniel Brusilovsky, CEO of Teens in Tech Networks and a writer at TechCrunch.
Twitter functions as a site more effective for marketing a product and conducting business according to Brusilovsky. With some of the Top 100 Twitter users being Whole Foods, JetBlue and Dell Outlet (who garnered over 2 million in sales last year on Twitter alone), Twitter is more effective for industry news and professional purposes rather than a social network.
In June 2009, the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN) polled 200 Gen Y-ers about their social media habits. The study showed that while 99 percent of 18-24-year-olds have social network profiles, only 22 percent of them used Twitter.
Some Gen-Yers started an account to try Twitter before abandoning it shortly thereafter. NYU Junior Ariel Altschuler, 20, opened an account in April 2009, with his first ‘tweet’ reading, “I give in. Against my better judgment, I’m trying twitter.” Every few days, he posted his thoughts, upcoming events and even shared funny links. But a month later, he stopped. “I just stopped updating it. No reason – I just didn’t think about it anymore, unless one of my friends mentioned it.”
Twitter has yet to capture the attention garnered by Facebook. With an impressive 409 friends on Facebook, Altschuler seems like a popular guy. But compare that to his 22 followers on Twitter. And with only 22 people occasionally reading your ‘tweets,’ there is no need to invest as much time in upkeep.
While Gen Y worries that their friends won’t read their tweets, they also worry about strangers who might. “Facebook is a closed network,” Brusilovsky said. “It’s a network of people and friends that you trust to be connected to, to share information like your email address, AIM screen name, and phone number. You know who’s getting your status messages, because you either approved or added each person to your network.”
Brusilovsky, author of the TechCrunch.com article, “Why Teens Don’t Twitter”, believes that security issues have a lot to do with Gen Y’s hesitancy toward Twitter. “Twitter is the exact opposite. Anyone can follow your status updates. It’s a completely open network that makes teenagers feel unsafe about posting their content there. Who knows who will read it?”
For other young people who used Facebook since the beginning, there simply isn’t a need for Twitter. “I post things on Facebook for my friends to see,” said 20-year-old Alexandra Marchese, a junior at NYU. “Considering none of my friends are on Twitter, there is no guarantee anyone I know, or even care about, will read what I’m writing.”
Marchese decided against activating a Twitter account. “If Twitter came first, it might be a different story,” she said. “I have everything I need on Facebook. And for now, that’s not going to change.”
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 »