OK, so I’m middle-aged, and I use social media. WordPress – obviously – Twitter, and Facebook. Sometimes I find myself defending the use of this media to friends and family who are younger than me. What’s that about?
Last night, on the ABC here in Oz, “Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook”, a doco from the Beeb was broadcast. I wanted to watch it to validate my ongoing delusion that Facebook in itself is not bad, evil, nefarious, insidious, and is actually just a tool – like a hammer – that can be used for good in the right hands, or evil, in the wrong hands. The obvious corollary being if you control the tool, and use it with good intent, no-one gets hurt.
So, after about 40 minutes or so of a glowing portrait of a geek made good, I wondered if the program was going to put the light on the elephant in the room, and that is that there is a public perception that Facebook is not all good, and Facebook as a tool actually can do harm. After gushing mili-second vox pops of Facebook users boasting of having thousands of friends on Facebook, I was beginning to feel a bit nauseous.
And then, when Peter Pan (AKA Mark Zuckerberg) explained the *Like* system on Facebook, the light went on in my head as to why Facebook sometimes has such a bad reputation. For those of you that don’t know, the *Like* system means that every time a Facebook user clicks on a *Like* button of the Facebook page of a company – Coca-cola, for example – the company pays Facebook: the more clicks on *Like* by millions of users, who are in essence giving a positive rap to that company, the more the cash register rings at Facebook Inc. And the more ‘friends’ you have, the more likely that *Like* system spreads for products, the more the cash register rings at Facebook Inc, and on and on it goes. The need to have friends almost at all costs, becomes insidious.
Let’s go back a bit. I’m middle-aged right? when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, there was still this quaint social institution called pen-pals. If you were a pen-pal, you corresponded with someone you’d not actually met; but what you wrote about took the form of a conversation. So, now I’m officially an old git, and I use social media, I use my chosen social media in the same way. It’s about having a conversation with someone, who I also think has something interesting to say. And my conversations are with people – and sometimes institutions – that I care about. I’ve never *Liked* a company or product on Facebook. And I’m not about to start.
On Facebook, my ‘friends’ are family – nieces and nephews, who are scattered around various parts of Australia – and groups that I have something in common with, such as the Chromosome 18 Group, and the Australian Rare Chromosome Awareness Network Group. That’s it. You won’t find me on Facebook if you Google my name, because my version of Facebook is – he says smugly – a meaningful and private use of the tool. Facebook for me is about friends and family, and groups, I care about, want to listen to, and talk to. That’s it.
There are many options with Facebook; how you set your privacy, how open you are to being friends with someone you don’t personally know, and are never likely to meet. But above all, Facebook provides a free and user-friendly means of having meaningful conversations.
At least I know I’m in the naive minority who think and do the same way. I know my limitations.
Will I still be using social media when my children are 20-something? Probably.
Will my children be using social media? I’d be very surprised if they didn’t. And they’ll use it properly too, damn it!
