Buenos Aires / Society – The 4th of February, 2004, a social network started to operate: Facebook. What founder Mark Zuckerberg, together with Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes had in mind was to build a community for Harvard students only. However, they started to include other universities, until any mortal who had an e-mail account could join in. Six years later, it has over 350 million active users, who upload 2,500 photos and create over 3,500 events every month. That is probably why we hear the word Facebook so often not only in the Internet, but also in other ambits such as radio or television.

 

The range of activities that the network enables is tremendously wide. From sharing photos, messages, notes and events to finding old acquaintances, perhaps the most attractive feature and which makes it so attractive to new users. Even the concept of “e-mail address” is mistaken with the fact of having a Facebook account. This popularity undoubtedly overran and blurred the original intentions.

 

The truth is that it is possible to make “friends” by including contacts from their e-mail accounts; from then on, the network itself will seek affinities and acquaintances and will offer “friendship requests”.

 

Twitter is a permanent communication channel open to friends, clients, fans, readers… and the list is endless. One can follow-up on news, offers, exchange rates or current affairs (Aníbal Fernández and Héctor Timerman are among the politicians who are great fans of spreading news or opinions).

 

In general, the use of these networks tends to be looked upon as an entertainment, while their true potential are far wider. The common use among Argentinean users is to upload photos, make comments, look for old friends and make details of private lives public, for instance that Tom has an “open relationship” with Mary.

 

However, there are some people (a low percentage), who “squeeze” Facebook and get the reaction of the public to certain topics before going out into the open officially. Thus they test not only reactions but also interest.

 

In a very short time, we can all feel the words of the song by Roberto Carlos, “I want to have a million friends” in the flesh. Nonetheless, this is also one of Facebook’s liabilities. For a start, instead of “friend” it should say “acquaintance” or “contact”, but the “miracles” performed by marketing deserve a complete paragraph (who doesn’t have an unexpected episode in relation to the “friends” that this network proposes?) The semantic contraption tends to make one feel confident and sharing photos of making comments which belong to the sphere of privacy because of one’s ignorance in using this tool.

 

Using Facebook requires a strategy about adding contacts, for instance, define whether the activities of the others will be visible in the main page. These details demand time to evaluate who one will “continue to be friends with”, or who will be eliminated from the starting page. Another important point is the privacy of contents: every user signs a contract upon opening their account and it isn’t quite clear who the images belong to. Very few take security or privacy safeguards, that’s why it’s important that the parents be there with their children when they start discovering the uses of these new tools, helping them to discern criteria and boundaries.

 

The network is so powerfully influential that there are now several radio and television shows that include the use of this tool to get on-line feedback from their viewers and learn what they’re thinking. Such is the case of “Una vuelta nacional” or “Letra chica”; or T.V. channels like I-Sat, that give detailed information and comments. As a counterpart, lists and forums are going down on the “digital stock exchange’ and the value of Facebook shares are soaring. More marketing miracles.

 

We shall shortly see the film The Social Network, based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires, The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”. The film, which is due to debut in Argentina on December 9^th, will show us more. We shall have to see and read.

 

VIRTUAL FRIENDSHIPS

 

Social networks imply wide opening to new experiences and knowledge, fast communication, the possibility to take part in debates, to reestablish links with old friends and start professional contacts… But it also implies little if any critical reflection, narcissism and the risk of bumping into ill-intentioned individuals.

 

Those who have been disappointed —and there are some already— consider that network communities are weak, that they are based on an artificial intimacy and on the illusion of human relations which is the disguise of existential emptiness. In other words, the unreal world where one never dies or matures through the experience of the precariousness of existence. In turn, those who support them, say that in the virtual world we all seem more human, that one surfs to give rather than to receive; the day is full of surprises, novelties and unexpected contacts; people invest their time in feeding human relations; one discovers a lot of people with similar interests and we become aware of their permanent presence in our lives.

 

Most likely, both groups are right. In fact, the new forms of establishing social relations don’t exclude the traditional ones, but complement them instead. Therefore, if a person is psychologically, spiritually and existentially balanced and has a rich social and professional life, he/she can benefit from these means to develop his/her personality even further. If, instead, the person isn’t yet formed or lacks balance, the danger is that he/she might use up their “relational” energies in the virtual world.

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Quique Figueroa. Article published in Ciudad Nueva magazine, www.ciudadnueva.org.ar