The great impact of social networks on nowadays society is unquestionable, as everyone can observe by himself or herself how all the current events are quickly dispersed and distributed through all over the world by the common people using their PCs and/or smartphones. Everyone has become a news agency nowadays with the development of the social networks, as the information you post on your profile can be available for everyone, can be discussed and argued. However, the information content in the social network is completely various including fake information, which purpose is to draw the viewer`s attention, shock him or discredit in someone else`s eyes. Therefore, the question of the impact of social networks on the society is actual to speak about; moreover, the aim of this essay is to find out what exact social groups are involved in the social network that we`re about to discuss and how they are connected to the mainstream culture. I suggest using the Facebook as a social network for this research because it`s the most popular social network of the world, and it obviously represents the mainstream trends and thoughts in the modern society. The theoretic data and personal conclusions mentioned in the paper will be proved by the statistics of information services and the various examples from other researchers` works.
According to statistics, it`s 67% of current users of Internet are the subscribers of social networks; moreover, this figure is also an approximate percentage of Facebook users, 16% of Internet subscribers use Twitter, 15% are fond of Pinterest, and 13% share their photos using Instagram (Widrich). Statistics also state that 70% of urban population spend the majority of their time on social networks, which is not surprising due to a higher technological development and a repeating evolution of communication and information devices, such as laptops, tablets and smartphones. However, there is a more surprising fact that women use social networks more often than men do, as they dedicate 9% more of their time to communicating via social networks. That gives us an approximate image of the average Facebook user: it`s a 24-25 year-old woman, who lives and works in a developed city, has a college degree and an annual household income of more than $75,000 (Widrich).
Facebook is available online for everyone, who has access to the Internet and wants to communicate with their friends, schoolmates, colleagues or business partners. The most useful feature of this social network is that it allows communicating with a person from a different country and staying in touch with him or her using only your PC or even smartphone. Though, Facebook has almost 70% of Internet subscribers, every new subscriber is always welcome to join the biggest network providing an opportunity to sharing the most popular news between his friends or colleagues also.
Facebook management does their best encouraging their active users and the potential subscribers to visit their network more frequently and remain a subscriber as long as possible. On February 3, 2014, the company launched a new application project called "Paper" that invites various editors to recommend different articles and/or blog posts on various topics that are currently being discussed, from Top Worldwide news to local sports events, developments of technology and environmental issues (DeSilver). The current popularity of tis social network is so big that it`s even considered that a person that doesn`t have a Facebook account can be suspected of psychical and emotional imbalance. Many employers don`t want to cooperate with such people, as they look suspicious for them because of not joining the most popular social network and the psychologists believe that these people can be the potential maniacs and/or psychos. Forbes.com reported that the employers are afraid to even negotiate with such people, as they think that their accounts contained so much horrible information about them that they were deleted from the system (Hills), and the German magazine "Der Taggspiegel" highlighted that James Holmes and Norwegian Anders Breivik, both mass murderers, haven`t had a Facebook account either.
A Slate.com representative also gave her recommendations about avoiding meeting with the people that don`t have a Facebook account, as they could represent themselves using a fake name. However, she accepts the fact that this can`t be applicable for the older people that were already "productive adults" before the establishment of the social networks (Farhad Manjoo). The news site, Slashdot, published a summary of mentioned above article by "Der Taggspiegel". It highlights that Holmes that was responsible for killing 12 people and injured 58 among the visitors of a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado had never had a Facebook account; however, he was registered on Adult FriendFinder website, a social network for finding a sexual partner. Another example is Anders Breivik, who was accused of killing 77 people also hadn`t ever registered on Facebook; however, he had an account on Myspace (Slashdot).
All of these are supposed to be the proofs of the argument that every young or middle-aged person is a potential mass murderer or a psychopath, at least. However, such trend is discriminative against the people that don`t like Facebook due to their own reasons, they may not like the design of the site; they don`t have enough time to spend on Facebook, they prefer its analogues, etc. Moreover, the mentioned examples of the people with social and psychical disorders also state that they were registered on a social network anyway, as they used the Internet in communicating and finding new interlocutors. The shy and unsocial people should not also be treated as the psychos, as it`s their personal way of thinking and living their lives. The thing is that Facebook has an informational monopoly on all over the world and everyone, who doesn`t want to be a part of it is considered as an outcast. It`s an aggressive and effective method of attracting new subscribers; however the ethics of such method is doubtful.
The next section of the research is the place and role of Facebook in a mainstream culture. At first, we should define the term of mainstream itself. It`s an aggregate of popular and media cultures that represents the beliefs and thought of the majority of people. The definition can vary from one sphere of population`s life to another; however, the mainstream in the context of the initial topic of the research is the most popular and most discussed information available over the Internet.
The results of the research by Pew Research Center state that almost a half (47%) of adult American Facebook subscribers stated that they had ever been informed about a certain event by the social network itself; moreover, this amount of people is approximately one third of the adult American population. Although, the most of the representatives of this subgroup (78%) said that they retrieved information about the current news from Facebook accidentally, as they were coming on the site with a different purpose at that moment. Only 4% of the participants of the survey said that the Facebook was their direct source of current news. The news users of Facebook are considerably younger that the rest of the adult subscribers (39 years against 47 respectively). More than a third of them are between the ages from 18 to 29, although 40% of them are at the age category between 30 and 49 years old.
Only 28% of the subscribers have never been tracking the current news via Facebook. Moreover, even within this subgroup only 41% said that Facebook would be the first source of fast and free news for them. However, the structure of this news should also be taken into consideration. Despite the fact that the news consumers of Facebook state that they track the various range of topics, the most popular news on the social network is an entertainment news (73%), the second place goes to the community news with 65% and sports with 57% hold the third place (Amy Mitchell). The mentioned above figures confirm that the Facebook is one of the most powerful sources of mainstream information with its news sharing features and the subscribers` discussions.
However, Facebook is sometimes also a source of criticism of mainstream mass media and the way of struggling against it. Many activists use the free sharing of the information via Facebook to inform the people about the hazards of mainstream. On November 10, 2013, Facebook subscribers sharply criticized the Mass Media Networks such as NBC, CNN, ABC, and FOX News on the Facebook pages of these networks to draw the viewers` attention to their corruption and the lies that they state repeatedly. The activists invited everybody on March against Mainstream Media stating that media is just a tool of controlling masses and appealing to everyone to asking more questions to what they hear and listen and keep searching for the truth (Pontbriand).
The Facebook has been proved as a mainstream social network nowadays due to the statistics and analytical information mentioned above. However, it makes the network dead for the future populations according to the latest anthropological data. As the network grows more and more popular among the older people, it becomes less popular for those who are young and ambitious nowadays. The research has proved that the majority of nowadays 16-18 years old teenagers don`t want to be acquainted with Facebook for several reasons. The first and the main reason is that they do not want to be a part of the mainstream culture due to the opposing psychology of every teenager that tries to find his or hers own way of doing thing by simply neglecting and even opposing the popular options. The way of online communication is not an exception also. The teenagers feel themselves anxious and even angry when their parents are adding them as the Facebook friends, as every teenager doesn`t want to be controlled by their parents online in addition to obedience to them in their real life.
The second reason is that they are concerned that all the Facebook accounts` information is being stored and checked by the Government, and they don`t want to be controlled in this way also. They are choosing Snapchat and WhatsApp instead for communicating with their friends and schoolmates and will never be registered to Facebook (Miller). Does this make these kids psychopaths according to the research mentioned above? It is more than doubtful. Due to these reasons, Facebook will lose the next populations as their subscribers; however, the company may have some scenarios in attracting the future subscribers, as it can`t afford to lose more and more subscribers every year only because of teenage angst.
Works Cited
Amy Mitchell, Jocelyn Kiley, Jeffrey Gottfried and Emily Guskin. The Role of News on Facebook. 24 10 2013. http://www.journalism.org/2013/10/24/the-role-of-news-on-facebook/. 13 03 2014.
DeSilver, Drew. Facebook is a news source for many, but only incidentally. 04 02 2014. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/04/facebook-is-a-news-source-for-many-but-only-incidentally/. 13 03 2014.
Farhad Manjoo, Emily Yoffe. Revenge of the Facebook Stalker (Transcript). 06 03 2012. http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/manners_for_the_digital_age/2012/03/transcript_facebook_stalker_should_i_tell_a_cheating_guy_s_girlfriend_that_we_hooked_up_.single.html. 13 03 2014.
Hills, Kashmir. Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.'. 08 06 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/08/06/beware-tech-abandoners-people-without-facebook-accounts-are-suspicious/. 13 03 2014.
Miller, Daniel. Facebook’s so uncool, but it’s morphing into a different beast. 20 12 2013. http://theconversation.com/facebooks-so-uncool-but-its-morphing-into-a-different-beast-21548. 13 03 2014.
Pontbriand, Andrew. Facebook Users "Troll" Mainstream Media - MSM Ignores it. 11 11 2013. http://www.activistpost.com/2013/11/facebook-users-troll-mainstream-media.html. 13 03 2014.
Slashdot. Facebook Abstainers Could Be Labeled Suspicious. 29 07 2012. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/07/29/1627203/facebook-abstainers-could-be-labeled-suspicious. 13 03 2014.
Statistic Brain. Facebook Statistics. n.d. http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/. 13 03 2014.
Widrich, Leo. Social Media in 2013: User Demographics For Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. 02 05 2013. http://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-in-2013-user-demographics-for-twitter-facebook-pinterest-and-instagram. 13 03 2014.
