BY SAM MASLING, JUNIOR EDITOR
The pioneer of social media, the giant of connectivity, the access point for everything about everyone you couldn’t care less about: Facebook was the definition of social media for many years. If you didn’t have a page, you were totally out of the loop.
Since its heyday, Facebook has steadily acquired multiple “hot” social media enterprises, including its largest and most recent acquisition of Instagram for over one billion dollars. People are now joining Facebook more than ever before, with over 1.3 billion active users as of January, 2015, according to Zephoria, an Internet marketing website. However, our generation’s obsession with Facebook seems to be fading.
A survey of 26 Wilson students showed that 12 percent don’t have a Facebook account, 24 percent have a Facebook account but never use it, 44 percent have a Facebook account and use it semi-regularly but never post, and 20 percent still use it regularly.
Sophomore Nathalie Mitchell uses Facebook for “posting pictures, stalking purposes, and mortifying [her] friends.” While posting pictures is a great use, Instagram does that on a much wider scale, generally dominating that section of social media.
Many Facebook users only check their feeds every once in awhile, and often it is just to get rid of the pesky phone notifications. Sophomore Patrick Mulderig says, “I only open it to get rid of the red bubbles that show up on my phone.”
A select few Wilson students still use Facebook for its original purpose: staying connected with people you generally wouldn’t communicate with. Senior Nico Colaizzi said, “I still use it a bit, largely to keep in touch with people.”
A few years back, Facebook was incredibly active. Everybody’s friends were constantly posting status updates, funny links, and pictures. Today that activity is mostly adding to photo albums and commenting on old posts or pictures. As sophomore Cal Menditto puts it, “Facebook has lost its charm. It used to be a lot better but as we’ve grown up it has gotten a lot less interesting and a lot less fun.”
Facebook is definitely not “dead” per se, but our generation is beginning to lose interest. This is due in large part to the advent of new facets of social media and the general tendency of our generation to get bored quickly.
The original giant of social media is slowly fading, and while it continues to attract millions of new users and buy other small enterprises, at Wilson the ubiquitous power that Facebook once wielded over social networking is steadily receding. •
BY ROCHELLE O’BRIAN, PHOTO EDITOR
