Facebook and Social Media Use Among College Students, Essay Example

Over the past decade social media sites and mobile applications have become common, attracting millions of users to services such as Twitter, Snapchat, and many others. At the top of the social media heap, however, is Facebook, the site developed by Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook is now among the world’s most-visited websites, and has billions of users across the globe. Although Facebook began as a service for a select group of university students, it soon became available to any user over the age of 13, and has since grown to be used by people of all generations from young teenagers to senior citizens. Facebook continues to be used by college students and other young adults, but its popularity with this demographic has waned somewhat in recent years as it as services such as Twitter and Snapchat have attracted younger users. The following paper provides an overview of Facebook’s history, its use among college students, and the outlook for the future of Facebook and social media in general.

Background and Overview

Facebook was not the first social media platform, nor was it the first to attract large numbers of young users. Among the early social media platforms that gained widespread popularity was the site MySpace, a service that allows users to develop profile pages on which they can post personal information, photographs, links to news stories or favorite websites, and a range of other information. Although MySpace is still active, it has lost a significant number of users in recent years as the popularity of Facebook has grown. The two platforms share some general features, primarily in the way they are built around the concept of individual users creating and posting profile pages. As Facebook’s features have evolved, however, its platform has become more interactive and allows for more flexibility in how users can connect and communicate with other users. These interactive qualities are among the features that helped Facebook grow to surpass MySpace (and all other social media platforms) in terms of size and the number of users.

Although Facebook has amassed over one billion users around the world, it began as a small platform developed for the use of students at Harvard University (Phillips, 2007). Facebook, which was originally known as The Facebook (and was hosted at the website URL thefacebook.com) was inspired by the so-called “face books” published by some universities, fraternities, and sororities; these face books often contained pictures and brief biographies of students. When Zuckerberg attended Harvard University, the school did not publish an official face book, though some student-led organizations published their own face books containing pictures of the organization’s members. Facebook began life as little more than a prank, when Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s database to obtain identification photographs and biographical information about his fellow students. Zuckerberg used this information as the basis for a program he named “Facesmash.” The premise of the program was simple: two photographs of students (either two males or two females) would appear on a screen, and the viewer would vote for whichever user was “hotter,” i.e.- more attractive (Phillips, 2007). The site attracted thousands of users before it was quickly shut down, but Zuckerberg was inspired to develop the Facebook platform after the response Facesmash received (Phillips, 2007).

While Zuckerberg’s first site was popular with students, he faced serious repercussions from Harvard University, and was nearly expelled (and even faced potential criminal charges) for breaking into the database (Phillips, 2007). The charges were eventually dropped, and Zuckerberg moved forward with his idea of developing an online version of the traditional college face book. What made Facebook so compelling to its early users was the way it allowed them to develop lists of Facebook “friends” and to share updates and personal information with these friends. The use of the original Facebook site was restricted to students from Harvard University, though as it gained in popularity it quickly expanded to allow users from all Ivy League schools. Between 2004, when the site was first developed, and 2006 it grew into a platform available to students at other universities across the country and eventually became open for use by anyone over the age of thirteen.

Facebook Features

In the decade since its inception the Facebook platform has evolved to include a number of new features, but several of the key features on the first version of the site remain more or less the same. The basic premise of Facebook is that users develop personal profiles, or “Facebook pages,” which typically contain a picture of the user and some biographical information. Individual Facebook pages can be customized by users to include a variety of information, such as age, marital or relationship status, educational background, current employment and employment history, lists of hobbies and interests, and archives of photographs, videos, music, and other information. Facebook users connect with other users by sending and receiving “friend requests,” and use these requests to develop an interlinked network of fellow users. Generally speaking, Facebook users are able to view or read the personal information posted to their friends’ Facebook pages, while such information is shielded from the view of unapproved page visitors.

From its inception, the basic features of Facebook pages allowed users to communicate with each other quickly and easily. An announcement for a party or other event, for example, could quickly be shared among a network of linked Facebook friends. In a similar manner, Facebook users can post updates about anything from daily activities to changes in relationship statusto their Facebook pages and such information can be seen by their Facebook friends. One of the central visual features of a Facebook page is the “Wall,” and Facebook friends can visit their friends’ pages and post messages, pictures, videos, and other information on their Facebook Walls. Facebook also allows users to communicate one-on-one with friends through a chat feature without making these communications visible to other users. Each Facebook page contains a Timeline feature which allows users to look back over the history of all of the activity on their pages. A more recently-added feature is the Newsfeed, which automatically shares information about statutes updates and announcements among Facebook friends. For each of these features, Facebook offers privacy settings so users can customize the degree to which their personal information is visible to each of their Facebook friends.

Facebook Use among College Students

While Facebook remains popular with college students, a number of factors are causing changes in the number of students using Facebook and they way they use it. One of the primary factors driving down Facebook’s popularity among college students is its popularity with the general public (Campus Quad, 2014)). As multiple generations of Facebook users sign on, college students are not as easily able to shield information on their Facebook pages from family members, potential employers, and others outside their social circles (Pempeck et al, 2009).  Another -and perhaps even more significant- factor is the explosive growth of mobile technology such as smartphones and tablets.  As screen sizes shrink from the large viewing area of computer monitors to the small viewing area found on cell phones, social media sites and applications that are simpler and more streamlined are gaining millions of users. According to one recent report, the Snapchat platform (which allows users to send pictures and brief messages to other users) is now used by 77% of college students on a daily basis (Wagner, 2014). The Twitter platform, which also allows users to send brief messages to either individuals or entire networks of linked users, is also growing in popularity with college students and users of all ages.

Facebook as an Educational Tool

In the 2013 New York Times article Technology and the College Generation, author Courtney Rubin examines the technology gap between today’s college students and their professors, noting that most students now view email as “antiquated” and unacceptably slow in an era of instant messaging and round-the-clock Twitter updates. In one example, Rubin describes the moment when a particular college professor realized that almost none of his students realized he had changed the course schedule because they simply did not check their school-issued email accounts (the professor subsequently added the following guideline to the course syllabus: “students must check email daily”).  For generations of computer and Internet users who have lived through the evolution of this technology, email might seem like a typical and common form of electronic communication; for younger users who are immersed in mobile technology, email may seem hopelessly old-fashioned and outdated. .

There may be a lesson to be learned for educators, which is that it is not only necessary for students to be responsible for such tasks as checking email, it is also imperative that schools adapt to evolving technology and applications. As an example, professors who establish Facebook pages for their courses can easily post updates and other course information. The downside to this, of course, is that many (if not most) students would not likely be happy about having to link their network of personal friends to the Facebook pages of their college courses. This realization has broader implications for educators, however, as it highlights the need for schools and individual instructors to consider new ways to use technology to reach students. If, as appears to be the case, Facebook may not be the ideal platform for such communications, it may be possible to use other platforms such as Twitter on which one-way communication can more easily be facilitated.

Conclusion

In an age when technology is evolving and changing so rapidly, the ten-year-old Facebook platform is already being supplanted by newer, more streamlined sites. Facebook is still used by the vast majority of college students, though many of the report that they use it primarily to stay in touch with family members and friends outside of their immediate social circle (Rubin, 2013). For communicating directly with friends in real time, however, platforms that are more suitable for use on mobile devices are replacing Facebook. A platform such as Twitter, for example, does not require users to develop an extensive profile page, while at the same time it does not serve as a means of providing a broad cross-section of information to other users. Twitter, Snapchat, and other platforms are more suited for sending and receiving brief messages and updates in a similar manner to text messages, though “tweets” can reach a wider audience all at once. It seems likely that Facebook will continue to be used by college students as the central online repository for basic biographical information, while newer, faster, and simpler social media platforms are becoming the standard means for direct, active communication. The speed with which Facebook evolved from a small, exclusive social media platform to a global phenomenon used by billions shows, however, that the new social media sites of today are likely to be replaced by even newer platforms in the years to come.

References

Campus Quad,. (2014). The Evolution of Social Media Use Among College Students – Campus Quad. Retrieved 25 October 2014, from http://www.campusquad.co/evolution-social-media-use-among-college-students-2/

Pempek, T., Yermolayeva, Y., & Calvert, S. (2009). College students’ social networking experiences on Facebook. Journal Of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 227–238.

Phillips, S. (2007). A brief history of Facebook. the Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia

Rubin, C. (2013). Technology and the College Generation. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 25 October 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/fashion/technology-and-the-college-generation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Wagner, K. (2014). Study Finds 77% of College Students Use Snapchat Daily. Mashable. Retrieved 25 October 2014, from http://mashable.com/2014/02/24/snapchat-study-college-students/