Facebook Is Irrelevant

From Farmville to Vines to invites to next weekend’s biggest parties, Facebook has served as social media’s most prominent platform since its birth in 2004. While it dominated the drastic spike in technology and social media’s dictation over our lives, the recent rise of various other platforms has diminished its significance. There was a time when Facebook could be directly tied to millennials’ addiction to social media, and as it spread to older generations, it seemed it would remain at the forefront forever. The star burned so bright that in 2010 a movie was made about its origin story, hailing Facebook as not just a social network, but The Social Network, going on to win three Oscars. But of course, success only means competition will arise. While Facebook occupied the minds of anyone with a computer, other companies began producing their own social media platforms which quietly grew in popularity. We commonly heard complaints about these new platforms, such as Twitter (“Why do people need to always know what I’m doing?”), Snapchat (“So I only have ten seconds to look at this before it disappears?”), and Instagram—for which I have no critiques. Somehow these networks overcame society’s initial trepidation, and while Facebook has dwindled in popularity, these platforms only continue to gain users. In October 2018, Snapchat began releasing original televised content, while Twitter has become crucial for remaining up to date with American politics.

Meanwhile, Facebook joined the trend of offering stories significantly after the concept was popularized by Snapchat and Instagram, and its success with the fad was lackluster at best. It is widely reported that along with the rise of technology in our lives, the average person’s attention span is decreasing, which is both a cause and an outcome of Facebook’s collapse. I can refresh my Twitter feed every minute knowing I’ll have brand new tweets to occupy my mind, and I can scroll through Instagram to see a perfect combination of my friends’ lives, celebrity updates, and the latest memes. With each of these new networks, I can interact with the celebrities of my choosing, while staying up to date with my peers; with Facebook, I can see that someone I haven’t spoken to since Grade 7 just got in an argument in the comment section of a post about gun control. As a university student, I am far more likely to follow someone I meet at a party on Instagram than add them on Facebook, and would much rather send a mass snapchat to a select group of my friends than make a Facebook status. While I appreciate my professors’ attempts to be relatable by announcing at the start of a lecture that they know we’re on Facebook, I can’t help but feel that they’re around five years too late to that joke. I will admit, if someone is willing to send me lecture notes I will happily join as many Facebook group chats as required; but I’ll only need those extra notes because I was scrolling through Instagram in class.

By Jonathan Karr