Because of how the timing worked out when I went back to university to complete my MLIS, I was fortunate enough to be able to join Facebook when it was still restricted only to people with educational institution email addresses. (That blog post is dated 2007 but how it’s written makes it pretty clear I wrote it in library school which was Jan-Dec 2006 for me. I think some of my early blog post dates got screwed up in a blog merge I did a few years ago.) 🙁
I’ve been fascinated by social media since its earliest days (even writing an article about Facebook in CLA’s Feliciter magazine in 2007) and I’ve seen a lot of good, bad, and tinfoil hat in the decade plus that I’ve been using “Eff-Book”.
But lately, the pendulum is swinging towards social media (and Facebook specifically) being seen as a lot more bad than good – in how it reinforces filter bubbles, in how it creates frightening shadow profiles of users and otherwise plays fast and lose with your personal data, how it presents false realities of your own life and others, and even how it is designed to maximize your time spent using it using principles from psychology that aren’t dissimilar from those used by casinos.
I occasionally have friends who drop off Facebook for short detoxing periods, some who drop off permanently and even some brave souls who’ve resisted the lure and never joined the site.
Here’s are some recent articles that might make you reconsider your presence on Facebook:
Post a Comment