Once we are all online, how are we going to meet new people? How are we going to expand our circle of friends? How are we going to interact the way we once did before online chatrooms and timelines? This last week, Facebook has begun pushing out a new way to connect for it’s users. It’s called “Discover People”. According to Digital Trends, “When you open “Discover People,” you’ll see at the top of the display a message asking you to “introduce yourself” so “people can get to know you better.” If you click on your profile picture, Facebook will direct you to another screen where you can add a short bio, another swipe to the left will ask you to add featured photos.” (Shah) They point out that this is acting as an extension of the existing discover tools to help you find people who you might know such as colleges at work or peers at school. Personally, I see this being used not only by users but also being used by media companies as well to branch out to potential users. If this were able to match me on Facebook with a media news company that was producing stories that I was interested in, this could be a tool that cannot only make person to person connections easier but also person to company. However, I am certain that there are those who believe this new technology would be more detrimental rather than helpful.
With the development of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, many people are concerned that this will further disconnect people from the reality they should be living in. But there are also many concerns that this will simply keep people in their own little bubble of friends and acquaintances and never actually branch out into any other friend groups. In Baym’s reading “Personal Connections in the Digital Age” there is concern raised about the forming of relationships online as opposed to face to face. He had written, “At the same time, many question whether relationships formed this way [online] can ever be as real as those formed face to face.” (Bayum, 10) I feel that this concern has been around for as long as people have been able to communicate in new ways all throughout history. I believe that when the telephone came out, there must have been a small portion of the population that believed that it would destroy the way we communicate to each other. But it not only became one of the most significant ways people communicated with each other but the media ended up taking strong advantage of this and news could travel faster than ever before. In the end, I think this is just the way our social interactions are headed. Many people feel we are losing something by just interacting online but in my honest opinion, I feel there is much more to be gained. Through face to face interactions alone, there are people in this world who we will never see in person and who we would never meet by any other form other than our social media presence. And, of course, our media is rapidly changing due to not only what we share but who we share it with.
Work Cited:
Baym, Nancy K. "Making New Media Make Sense." Personal Connections in the Digital Age.
Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2010. 22-49. Print.
Shah, Saqib. "With its new tool, Facebook is pushing everyone to make new friends." Digital Trends. N.p., 03 Feb. 2017. Web. 06 Feb. 2017.
Link: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-discover-people/
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