The Facebook phenomenon

The Facebook. You know you’ve been there. The URL bar on your Internet browser recognizes the familiar letters as you enter the address: thefacebook.com. You hesitate momentarily at the home page. Should you log in and sacrifice the next hour or two of your life? Or should you resist for just a bit longer?

You have so much work to do, but the temptation is eating away at your waning self-control. What about that Spanish exam you have tomorrow or that paper due Thursday in your anthropology class? Can the paper wait? You can start studying in an hour or two and still be okay, right?

Having convinced yourself that you don’t need to start studying yet, you slowly type in your username and password, looking forward to every second ahead. Maybe another user has asked to be your friend. Maybe someone has left you a message.

What is this crazy phenomenon plaguing students nationwide? Why is it consuming our thoughts?

This wild addiction called The Facebook is nothing more than an on-line directory of registered users across the country. Once you register, you are automatically connected to a network of SMU students as well as students from various other universities, which you can browse to look at pictures, hobbies, and most importantly, relationship status. Yes, you can actually search the SMU network for everyone who marked “single” in the status category and browse through the list for potential romance or just a good time. Users can mark and post on their profiles what they are looking for in meeting other people. These categories include friendship, dating, a relationship, random play, or “whatever I can get.” And yes, many users click the “whatever I can get” box.

Sound like a dating service? Well, The Facebook phenomenon has landed at many other universities throughout the country. A friend at Vanderbilt said that students there use the Facebook as a “hook-up” directory. Students search for other single users and basically select candidates for a date or at least a good make-out session. Well, so much for actually going out and trying to meet someone.

There are so many other wonderful, fun things about Facebook though. You can ask other users to be your friend. You can send users messages. You can create special interest groups and invite other users to join. You can reconnect with your old friends from high school through the “high school search” even if you are like me and never really wanted to see many of those people again. You can keep up with friends and acquaintances by simply browsing profiles.

Some think this concept is stupid, and really, it is a waste of time. But here is why we here at SMU love The Facebook: we feel loved! We feel connected to one another. We both absorb and fall into the community formed over this trivial Web site. All of a sudden, there are more familiar faces on campus. Other students we don’t even know want to be friends with us! We are more popular than we thought we were. What a fantastic ego boost for the college student!

A word of caution, though, for students considering registration at theFacebook.com: It is an addiction. Your first time on the site will consume hours of your time. And you will continue to log back in time after time to see if someone else wants to be your friend. You will find yourself bored doing homework or during class, and you will browse through the entire SMU network looking at pictures and profiles. You might even find yourself clicking on the “single” link to peruse potential dates to your sorority holiday formal — not that I’ve done that before.

New users, please allow yourself a solid two hours in your initial Facebook visit. Try to limit your visits to the site to twice a day. You have to start controlling this addiction early, but just in case you get out of control, there are multiple support groups on the SMU network with people just like you, including “Facebooks anonymous,” “Facebooks aholics,” and “I need a patch to kick this Facebook habit.”

Returning users, continue your quest to bring other students onto the network to keep us amused and to cast away the monotony that begins to cloud around The Facebook. Oh, and while you’re at it, go ahead and ask me to be your friend. I can almost guarantee that I will confirm your request.

Brett Warner is a senior journalism major. She may be reached at [email protected].