Article Review

Article Review

This is an article written by Doug Gross at CNN, on January 30, 2014 about the 5 ways that Facebook has changed us, in both good and bad ways. The article sums up the 5 things about Facebook that has changed us the most and gives us the benefit and the negative of such thing. The first thing the article talks about is how awesome it is to be able to share events with a bunch of people at one time. It talks about how much easier it has become to just post a status about getting married and have 500 people find out that way. The negative part of this is that people tend to overshare about things that people don’t want to know, such as how their kid’s potty training is going. The next big thing they talk about with Facebook is the past is not always the past. The good news is that people can find people from their past much easier, such as college roommates and old high school friends. The bad part about this is that people you don’t want to be in contact with, such as exes, will still be a part of your timeline, or they can still find you. The third thing that Doug Gross found to have changed us through Facebook is that it can either make you happy or unhappy. A survey done at the University of Texas showed that people who use Facebook most are more socially and politically involved. In regards to unhappiness, it can make people envy others and start to dislike their own lives. An example of this is when someone is happily married and having kids, and their friend on Facebook just got a divorce, it is probably going to upset them to see their friend post pictures or statuses about their happy family. Another thing in Facebook that has changed us is that it is so easy to reunite with people that there is no point in a reunion. If people are posting things everyday for their old friends to see, what is the point in ever meeting up with them to reminisce on the good times they had together. And finally, the fifth thing that has changed us through Facebook is our privacy. The good thing that Facebook does is allows us to choose who can see what. So if someone posts something they know they will get in trouble for, they can block their family members from seeing it. The bad news is that it is the Internet, someone will always find a way around this and will be able to see anything you post. This article does a wonderful job on pinpointing things that have changed in our lives from one measly social media site.

This relates to what we have been talking about because in our forums we have been discussing how social media and other terms of internet communication have changed our lives. We all talk about how posting things on twitter and Facebook can be a problem, but this article has given us the benefit of those problems. Many people have posted that we have all been so dependent on the internet in our lives and this article just proves us right in a way where we are constantly learning about other people’s lives from what they post and no one wants to get together in person anymore because they can just check their Facebook update. We have become so impersonal from social media networks.