Social Networks

Social networking is extremely popular in my generation, as most people my age have Facebooks, Twitters, or Instagrams. People use these forms of social media to communicate, keep in touch, and keep up to date on today's issues. Facebook is a very common form of social media in which people create profiles about themselves to connect with other people. The intentions of these profiles is to portray who you are: including your interests, friends, appearance, etc. All profiles are meant to be real depictions of ones self, and yet they are far from it. I went through Facebook to take a look at profiles to get a real idea of how people are portraying themselves. It is clear that people are creating their profiles for what they want people to see, not who they actually are. These social media profiles are tapered toward how the users wants them to look, and the image of themselves they want to create for other people. They are far from what they are meant to be. These profiles are also highly gendered. Each girl's profile I go through look exactly the same. The pictures many girls put up on their social media pages are highly coordinated and uncandid, a lot of which one could be considered sexual objectification. Its funny how whenever girls take pictures together, they are always leaning on one leg or half squatting.  Guy profiles are a little more diverse, however some themes are commonly seen throughout: Sports being an example. "Friends" on Facebook are even worse. The term "friends" is devalued, as many people have other 1000 "friends" on their page. A majority of the time, people only barely know, if even at all, most of their "friends" on Facebook. It it disturbing how something like Facebook clearly shows a very unhealthy trend in how people communicate and meet one another in today's society.