The true meaning of "Face"book

We all have one. Some of us are one. Most of us ignore them, but some of us follow them. We can "like" them, or we can hide them. They can be stalked, or they can be blocked. Either way, we all know about them. Fellow social networkers, I'm talking about the Facebook Status Junkie.

Before the age of the Internet, privacy was an important and respected issue. People kept their private lives, well, private. Today, with sites like Twitter and Facebook, which averages over 800 million users to date, it's all about what you're doing, when you're doing it, and who you're doing it with. Some people join these social networking sites to get in touch with old friends, some to learn about new friends, but most utilize it to update their friends on the movie they just saw, how much studying they have to do, or the vacation they just took. Why do these "Facebook Status Junkies," as mentioned before, expose so much of their private lives to the ever-expanding Internet world? Every Twitter post or Facebook status we enter, every photo we upload, and every online conversation we have is shaping who we are on the other side of the computer screen, as depicted in the picture above. This illustration emphasizes the whole idea of privacy and how every virtual piece of information we put onto the Internet reflects a strip of who we really are offline; what we look like, who we hang out with, what we like to do, and so on. It evokes a sense of loss of self, and provokes Internet users to think about what they post on the Internet as a factor defining who they are in the real world. The way the strips of flesh peel back into bits of personal information floating into the computer screen really iterates the severity of how what we post online tears away at our privacy. It could also be perceived from the opposite direction, in that the strips of information coming from the computer screen shape every bit of who we are. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "Face"book, doesn't it?

For now, Facebook Status Junkies will continue to write statuses, avid social networkers will continue updating their profiles, and bloggers will continue blogging. But it is only a matter of time before the privacy of every Internet user is virtually nonexistent and nothing is hidden from the vast world that is sucking in bits of your personal identity from the other side of the screen.

Sources:
https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/internet_privacy_101_your_safety_guide_social_networking