Online Communities and Connection/Isolation

The CNN article and the New York Times have both expressed their concerns about how people are starting to realize that they don't need Facebook in their lives, how people are shunning it, and what the mainstream media is turning into. I personally believe that Facebook and other media sites can be useful tools as long as you can use them to your advantage. I have realized that opening a Facebook account has allowed me to be inactive on other versions of online communications such as yahoo and msn messenger which overall has saved me time in the long run. With Facebook's new video chat option I have been able to easily communicate with members of my family from Europe that I generally don't get to see, and I think that Facebook is continuously advancing. I generally use Facebook as a means of keeping up with important updates from the pages that i "like", and i believe this is very beneficial use of Facebook especially if this page shares news about things that you are passionate about.

Facebook can also be incredibly time consuming if you allow it to. In my Junior high years I spent way too much time on Facebook and it affected the way I acted around people and my ability to keep conversations online but not in the real world and this led to an overall lack of motivation in many aspects of my life. With this being said I don't know if disabling your account is an efficient idea because one may wish to avoid spending too much time on Facebook, but a more effective way to treat your addiction would be to slowly devote less time to it until the addiction is lost, Disabling your account could lead to temporary relief but it could also leave you wondering what you missed out on when you come back to your Facebook account.

Overall I believe that social media and texting should be used as a start up tool to build a community. Communities and groups of friends can and should be maintained by meeting up with your friends and not just talking to them online but Facebook and other social media gives you an option of contacting old friends and starting from there to help you maintain old friendships while starting new ones. Social Media is also a great way to keep in touch with distant family members and contacting co-workers and managers at the times they aren't able to meet in person. I feel that if people chose to stop using social media sites to as a means to block unnecessary communication and increase productivity, they would also be re-locating the time on other websites or forums to find out news that they could have found out from their buddies or an informative group on the social media sties. I personally pick and choose the stuff that will benefit me from the Websites and ignore the things that don't, as for texting i choose to generally not text too often when hanging out with friends because it tends to take away from the real experience. In conclusion I believe that this can build communities, but too much of one thing is never too good, If you use social media to a reasonable extent it can be considered a pro instead of a con.