Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Facebook Abusers


In a recent survey of 100 college students, studies showed that the social networking site Facebook had some intriguing correlations between narcissism and self-esteem.  The study found that young adults who have some narcissistic personality traits were more concerned with self-promoting themselves rather than using the site as a way to connect with friends.  Most of these people would use their "About Me" section of their page to show off their intelligence and many of their pictures were more focused on flaunting their physical attractiveness than showing good memories and times with friends.  The article explains that Facebook "offers a gateway for hundreds of shallow relationships and emotionally detached communication." In essence, Facebook gives its users complete control on how they want to be viewed by their peers.
With more than 600 million users, Facebook is clearly a major from of communication between just about everyone.  The fact of this matter is that anyone who has a Facebook page obviously didn't create that page in an effort to make themselves look bad, no one created their page with the attitude of "lets see how bad I can make myself look."  If that were the case what would be the point?  More and more employers are using Facebook to evaluate potential employees no one wants their potential future boss to have a bad perception of them because of what they saw on your Facebook.  I don't believe that the correlation between narcissism and self-esteem is an accurate one in this case.  For one, a survey of only 100 college students is nowhere near enough test subjects on a 500 million person social networking site to be considered accurate.  And what exactly they consider to be “narcissistic” is never clearly stated in the article.  In my opinion, this article is basically informing us that were all a little narcissistic.  Doesn’t everyone un-tag themselves in photos they don’t think their friends and family would approve of or find appealing to the opposite sex?  I can however understand where this article might be coming from when it says, “Facebook feeds narcissism.”  I do notice how many people like to update their status in what seems like an effort to “let it be known” that they are doing this or going there.  Many times this can come off as being obnoxious, and many times it is.  It seems as though many Facebook users are much more outgoing and show more confidence on the internet than they actually are, giving many people including potential employers the wrong perception.  Facebook is by no means a bad thing, I use mine everyday and like how it keeps me “in the loop” or what have you.  But, like anything else Facebook has its flaws and one of its biggest is that of getting the wrong perception of who people really are and getting to know their “online personality” instead of their real-life one.
By: Don Stewart