Essay

I don't really think of myself as having a super big "identity" on facebook. I mostly use it when I want people to know that I don't just sit around and read all the time. I always think about what I am about to post and if I am okay with what people see. I actually didn't even want a facebook until my boyfriend at the time convinced me to get one in March of 2009.

Facebook first started as thefacebook. Mark Zuckerberg created the site, which quickly spread across Harvard. It soon spread to other colleges, like Yale and Stanford. He was joined by his friends Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, who helped him to expand the site. They soon dropped out of Harvard to try and make their site even more popular. They bought the domain facebook.com for a supposedly $200,000.

Most people think that facebook has only negative effects on people. The average number of friends for a person is about 175 people. If the person is a teenager or if their profile is really colorful, that number gets larger. This can cause a person to have problems communicating with people that they are friends with on facebook. Also, if teenagers check their facebook more than once in a fifteen minute period that they are supposed to be studying, they have lower test scores than people who didn't.

Although facebook can have its negative effects, there are some positive ones. For someone who is extremely shy, like me, it can help for them to be able to talk to people online. This will hopefully help with their social connections in real life. It can also make some of their friends feel better about themselves. When you make a positive comment on your friends profile, it makes them feel better which helps with their self esteem.

 

When I first joined facebook, it was a way to talk to my boyfriend more. When we did break up, I used it to help me cope with it. I ended up almost completely abandoning it for about one month. The only things on my page were what my friends and family would put on there. I only got back on when I found my current boyfriend on myspace, and was actually okay with seeing what my ex had decided to post. This made it a lot easier to talk to my friends and let people know what I was doing and how I was feeling.
 
On occasion I would for some reason decide to play one of the many facebook games. I would get addicted to it for about a month or so, then suddenly decide that it was stupid and not worth my time. This first started with farmville. I would always watch my mom play it so I decided I would give it a shot. There was no point in it really but it helped to pass the time when I didn't really have a whole lot to do. The only bad thing was that once your farm got so big you couldn't really do anything unless you had gas, which cost actual money.
 
There was a lot of other games I ended up playing to, bejewled blitz, farkle, cafe world, and a few others that are no longer even on facebook, but the one that I played the longest was Gardens of Time. It was pretty much a try and find this type of game, and I was really good at it. I could get to where I could finish some levels in under five seconds! But you always had to buy things for your garden, and it required energy to be able to do one level. I got to level 24 before I decided to quite the game. It was the last facebook that I have played.
 
 

 
Once I got done with my game faze, I didn't really do a whole lot with facebook until just recently. I would only get on about once a week to check and see what my friends were up to, although if it was anything really interesting my mom would always tell me about it. I would sometimes update my status to something like "Going to Alabama to hang out with my sister :)" or something like that but most of the time I didn't like to put what I was doing. Every once in a while, someone would get a random shot of me with other people and tag me in it, although I don't much take pictures they somehow still got me in it. The only pictures I normally let anyone take is of me with my boyfriend, but we normally only take pictures during prom so I don't really have very many of those.
 

 



Just more recently have I allowed more people to take my picture with them. I figured if I let them take the picture maybe I won't look as dumb as I normally do in pictures. My friends have been uploading pictures of me and them all together and tagging me in them. I don't actually mind as much as I used to and now it actually looks like a I have a social life instead of just sitting around by myself all the time. But other than the pictures changing I still almost never change my status. I might still put something about how or what I'm doing but that is still pretty rare.

 

The main thing that I do with facebook now is just use the video chat function to talk to my boyfriend. It's been the only thing really keeping me sane these first couple of weeks of school. We chat about twice a day and sometimes three or four times, depending on my schedule and how long we talk. I also I.M. some of my friends that are still back in Taylor County, but most of the time no one is really on. I don't really think of myself as having a very big digital life, but I guess that just by being on facebook I have acquired somewhat of one just by the pictures that everyone posts that I am in.