Facebook over the past decade or so has turned many of us in the millennial generation and beyond into virtual social animals with the knowledge of how to interact with “friends” in an online space that you can personally tailor.
In my experience on the site in just one year so far, I have noticed specific trends through some of my friends, groups and pages I visit. This is by no way a concrete list of the things that define all Facebook users, and it may be unlikely that all 10 items in this list will apply to any one person. However, the following are seemingly popular reasons why people all over frequent the site. There are a multitude of things you can do on Facebook, so here is a top 10 list:
- To let others know more about you. This first point is very broad and probably obvious. This is because we let our friends and followers know a little bit more about ourselves through every single post, like, share and comment. This is something all social media users often do, either directly or indirectly. A friend perusing your wall on a whim will know more about you.
- To message friends we interact with in another setting. While Facebook is a place to keep a collection of all your friends throughout your life, I have found it most common when messaging, that we get in touch with the friends we currently meet with or can meet with in the physical world. Whether it is for a logistical reason or just to keep up a developing relationship, we virtually buddy up with those most important to us and present in our lives.
- To catch up with old friends. And of course, we can always get the initiative to reunite with those we may have friended a while back but forgot about. The digital age we live in can keep us connected with those we want to and at our own conveniences too.
- To keep our friends up-to-date regarding our lives. Personal walls are an easy and efficient way to let folks know about important and maybe not so important things going on in our daily lives. Other than big life changes, reaching out to acquaintances or even those closest to you no longer requires a one-on-one communication style anymore. At least it is not necessary when you can send out a mass correspondence with the click of a mouse.
- To keep track of our exploits in life. If you are not interested in investing the resources or time commitment needed to keep a personal journal or active blog, then your wall is a perfect way for you to track notable milestones in your life in a relatively quick way. The site is just as much for you as it is for those around you as well.
- To self-promote ourselves and our friends. Social media is an essential tool to learn for creators nowadays to share their works with friends and strangers to get noticed both initially and in the long run. You might be a writer or aspiring filmmaker, but whatever you may do that is sharable with the world is promotable. Making a page is fairly easy, and we get our friends liking and sharing in no time.
- To share our political and other polarizing opinions. With the shield of a computer screen, we feel more comfortable showing everyone else just who we are and what we believe in when we do not have to physically answer for our thoughts to anyone. Sharing or reposting something offensive to some is incredibly more common than saying something akin out loud in a normal conversation. This can be good and bad. It is a way to shift through your friend base that may agree with you and find out what you may have in common (or not) with others more so than you might have thought before. We can decide to abandon political correctness if we want to.
- To share media that we enjoy. When something is extremely entertaining, funny, interesting or profound, we tend to have this now natural urge to share it with those who we think might also enjoy it. This phenomena can range from the sharing of articles and webpages to music and videos. Pretty much anything is fair game, and taking advantage of that can prove social and fun.
- To follow what we like. Facebook can be a great place to follow our interests in entertainment, news, sports, politics and a range of most anything. Liking posts from the pages we like most increases our likelihood through Facebook’s algorithms that we will see more relevant announcements, messages and posts catered to us.
- To have a forum for free discussion. Comments can be a powerful thing, used correctly or otherwise. With those we do not know, we use our partial anonymity online to talk about things we might not feel comfortable speaking on in the outside world. We join groups to participate in this continuous social experiment, and we can also discuss or debate with personal friends. Sometimes these can get out of hand, but with the shield of Facebook, the consequences usually seem and sometimes are less drastic than face-to-face communication.
