Ideas for a Smarter, Faster World

Recently, articles have appeared in the New York Times and the USA Today announcing that people are leaving Facebook. NPR broadcasted a related story a few weeks ago as well. The coverage typically consists of interviews with a handful people that experienced Facebook burnout. These individuals were swallowed up in a Facebook frenzy they say, constantly updating their status and attempting to comment on all of their friends’ updates as well. It’s all too much for them. They must get out and leave Facebook behind. A few brand marketers have cited these articles as evidence that Facebook is in the midst of jumping the shark. Well, Facebook isn’t Fonzie in the Happy Days Hollywood episode.

First, the journalistic integrity of these stories is dubious. A dozen or so interviews do not make a trend. None of the stories cite any statistics supporting the claim that people are leaving Facebook in droves. In fact, the USA Today story actually admits the contrary:

Even tens of thousands of dropouts represent a fallen leaf in the forest of social networkers happily updating their status/thoughts/whereabouts at this very moment.

Second, all activities, even ones overtly labeled as healthy such as exercise, when pursued obsessively will have a negative impact on the quality of one’s life. So if you feel compelled to update your status every hour on Facebook, yeah, you’re going to burnout. You need downtime. In real life, are we always with our friends and our family? No, we take individual time. Social media is no different. It is merely tool for interaction. We control the level of interaction. We control the amount of time. We are always are in control. This extends to what you wish to share and what you won’t, pictures, videos, etc.

From a few personal friendships, I know that alcoholics feel great joy and freedom when they no longer imbibe. Yet, tens of millions of others regularly consume alcohol with no ill effect on their lives whatsoever. The growth of alcohol sales has not dwindled with the rise of AA nor do I see the demise of social networks like Facebook with the minority who choose to disconnect. The sky is not falling and neither is Facebook.

Tags: Facebook, George Potts, New York Times, NPR, Social Media, Social Networks, USA Today

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 9:38 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.