Students around the world are facing, in some cases, their last week at university, with looming deadlines and essay and dissertations to submit. Many have already finished, but some like myself have until the end of this week to hand in everything they have before the scrutiny of their academic achievements are met and their degree classification is out of their hands.
I assure you: being a student at this time of year is far from stress free. Students worldwide are sweating like a Vegas Elvis on a squash court.
So when I found out earlier today that my friend, Lauren, had almost (I suspect there was an intervention, lots of anger and then possibly acceptance) rescinded her Facebook password over to her friend as to avoid the temptation of spending all day on the site and neglecting her very important final year essays, I was not that surprised.
Many of the usual lot have criticised Facebook for being either a waste of time, blaming the users and saying they are fickle or fools. My point is simple. It has over 425 million users and would be the third largest country in the world if it was a physical entity. No matter how you approach the subject, Facebook and social networking is not only important and a necessity for today’s generation, but it is also here to stay.
One of the signs of addiction is the failed attempt to give up (pp. 3) though, in this case it cannot happen unless serious duress of the account holder is made - as her password has been change and no way to access her account.
The ongoing debate of whether the Generation Y and today’s students and youth are addicted to Facebook will go on until the cows come home, and even then, the cows will probably get brought into the discussion with their own version of opinions.
My opinion of which I was interviewed for a friend’s final year film project of a Multimedia Technology degree named aptly, ‘iGeneration’, studied the affects of the online world on the Generation Y, is clear and relatively simple.
We are not addicted to Facebook, social networking or the instant communications we see today. It has simply become part of the natural, albeit sped up progression of how people communicate. The issue we concern ourselves with is when this access is denied and we struggle to communicate by means of which we are used to.
We do however struggle to know what to do when we can’t instantly communicate with each other. Just as before the web, one might study an A-to-Z map to find driving directions; now we check on Google Maps instead. Instead of waiting for a letter sent by snail mail, we use e-mail and further our “addictions” to the BlackBerry and mobile, portable devices. The alternative options are not gone, more so hidden by far more instant and convenient methods.
