As I wait, staring at the blue and white colours on the screen, I get a familiar feeling of nervous anticipation and excitement in my stomach.
When Facebook finally loads my eyes dart around, wondering what to look at first. Four new notifications, one vampire invite, two friend requests and a message in my inbox - not to mention everyone’s status updates that I will pore over obsessively.
I’ll admit it. I’m a Facebook addict. But I know I’m not the only one - more and more New Zealanders fall victim to this addiction every day.
Social networking sites are nothing new; in fact you may be surprised to hear that the first recognisable ones were launched back in the mid-90s. Now the number is estimated to be over two hundred, with MySpace leading the charge at more than two million members. However, Facebook is very quickly catching up, having reached, it seems, a tipping point where suddenly everyone has realised that it is ‘the place to be’. Amongst my wider social group there remain only a few cynics stoically refusing to be sucked into the Facebook vortex, but I suspect that even they will converted when they go overseas. For this seems to be one of the main attractions of a site like Facebook - that it is so much easier to keep in contact with your friends who live in different cities and countries. Tearfully saying goodbye at the airport to yet another friend who is leaving on their big OE, I wipe my eyes as they walk away and shout “Make sure you Facebook me!”
As ‘Facebooking’ begins to give emailing a run for its money, it becomes apparent that social networking sites have changed the way we interact with our friends, and indeed even the meaning of friendship. Suddenly, we are asked to define someone’s friend status by the click of a button marked either ‘Accept’ or ‘Ignore’. Do you really want your flatmate’s sister’s husband as a friend? Or are you just accepting to be polite?
Let’s also not forget that many of the things we do whilst on these sites are mapped and reported in our News Feed. So does a current client need to know you’re hungover on a Wednesday? Should your highschool bully have the privilege of seeing the comments people write on your wall? And do you really want your ex-boyfriend to know that you’re seeing someone new?
Just think of all the things on your profile that aren’t fit for consumption by every vague acquaintance. With the never-ending News Feed and the Status Update feature in which you can post your existential condition for all to see, I start to wonder whether Facebook is bringing me closer to my friends, or too close. Suddenly I know intimate details about the life and emotional state of all my Facebook friends…but do I really care? Some of these people I haven’t seen for years, and even then we were never the best of friends. Sure, I like you, but do I really need to know that you’re tired, you’re bored, you’re at work, you’re hungry etc?
Instead of normal friendship development, in which people get to know each other over time, via Facebook we are catapulted into the mundane depths of someone else’s life, whether we like it or not. Don’t get me wrong though; I’m addicted to reading people’s status updates, which I blame partially on reality TV. While humans have always been voyeurs and exhibitionists, never before have we been so encouraged in our perversity. It’s been constantly reinforced that the everyday details of our lives are interesting to others, and that it’s also ok to obsessively watch people doing, well, nothing much.
This has also lead to more relaxed privacy boundaries - I can’t believe some of the things people write on other people’s walls. Do they not realise that everyone can read it? Or do they just not care? Is Facebook causing us to experience a loss in privacy, or are we happily giving it up? Recently an ex-colleague of mine posted in her status update: “I'm not counting down any more…contractions 8 minutes apart” Are you kidding me? You’re going into labour and your first thought is ‘Quick, I must update my status on Facebook’?! If Facebook really is just a symptom of the information age that we live in, then there’s one man who saw the disease coming - Marshall McLuhan, who coined the term ‘global village’ way back in 1962. Some explain this idea as the way electronic mass media collapse time and space barriers in communication. The way McLuhan described it, it’s not that the world is a global village, but that one’s ‘village’ could span the globe. Lo and behold we have Facebook, which allows our individual villages, a.k.a. profiles, to be seen all over the world.
Social networking sites get a fair bit of criticism from people claiming that today’s youth are becoming alienated from each other because they email instead of calling or visiting. But despite all the negative flak, I love Facebook, and I’ve never felt so connected to all my friends at the same time. My profile and the friends on it tell a story of where I’ve been and who I’ve met, and I’m so glad I can keep them a part of my life - even if it is only over cyberspace.
Speaking of, I’d better go check my Facebook. After four hours, I have a lot to catch up on.
feeling of nervous anticipation and excitement in my stomach. 
Just think of all the things on your profile that aren’t fit for consumption by every vague acquaintance. With the never-ending News Feed and the Status Update feature in which you can post your existential condition for all to see, I start to wonder whether Facebook is bringing me closer to my friends, or too close. Suddenly I know intimate details about the life and emotional state of all my Facebook friends…but do I really care? Some of these people I haven’t seen for years, and even then we were never the best of friends. Sure, I like you, but do I really need to know that you’re tired, you’re bored, you’re at work, you’re hungry etc? 