Facebooked

Follow the link to an article entitled Facebooked, study it and get ready to report:

https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/698/new-media/facebooked

In this article written in 2009 at the beginning of the rise of social media, the journalist evokes his own experience of the now famous network called "facebook". His point of focus seems to be to try and assess the benefits of using it and his conclusions are quite pessimistic. If he appreciates the space it offers people to stay in touch with relatives and friends who live far away, he denounces the superficiality of exchanges taking place on the platform as being shallow.  What indeed is the point of exchanging with people you wouldn't even talk to in real life...?

In other words, for him, FB is not a progress at all.  It's just boring.

Now, 9 years later we can say that social networking was certainly not a fad. It is still used by a growing number of people of all generations. Networking sites come and go as people opt for more spontaneous and dynamic forms of interaction but the tool remains and has offered improvement to our lives in many areas such as keeping in touch with distant people and getting involved in online activism.  Paradoxically, they do not solve the problem of loneliness but they do offer a solution to social isolation. People who have no friends in real life have no real friends in social networking life!  But populations which are isolated in a fight for a cause can find a platform to make their issues known to the world...