Facebook: An Involuntary Waste of Time?

Entertainment is a huge part of the life of every modern American citizen. Even those who are not themselves partaking in forms of recreation are being affected by its prevalence on a daily basis. It is estimated that 700 billion minutes are spent by Facebook users every month^[1]. I find it interesting to think about this from a different angle. What if, instead of surfing Facebook and doing arguably nothing productive, the people instead spent their time reading, or otherwise attempting to learn? What if they spent their time exercising? If the amount of effort spent on social networking were expended on more “positive” and “useful” activities, I think that great benefits would come more soon than we may think.

On the other hand, social networking is a setting in which advertisements run rampant. If significantly less people were to partake in social networking on a day to day basis, these advertisements would be much, much less effective and economical. Companies would have to once again pay for more expensive means of advertisement, such as running more ads in newspaper and magazine, and airing more commercials, rather than just letting their Facebook page circulate around through circles of users. Facebook is interesting in that it is an enormous billboard on which companies are free to advertise (although I’m sure there are situations in which partnerships exist, generating some of the massive revenue that Facebook rakes in). I can’t think of any other means by which marketing is “free”, to this great an extent.

It is phenomena such as these that make social networking sites interesting to me. While I enjoy the ease of communication I am given by Facebook, it really doesn’t give me much that I couldn’t get elsewhere. If I were to disable my Facebook account, I would just be forced to use email and text messages more. I don’t think that it would be too painful, but then again, I haven’t ever deleted or disabled my Facebook, so maybe that fact in itself says something about the grip that it has on its users. It’s almost as if people enjoy being shown advertisement after advertisement, yet are unaware of what is going on. I am interested to see where social networking goes in the future. I imagine that within the decade, Facebook will either cost money to use, or will cease to exist. The company is becoming such a dominant force in the realm of social networking that it seems inevitable that it will begin charging for its services.

And if intelligently priced, I doubt it will lose that many users at all.