When Online Takes Over

            Myspace.com has forever changed the way in which we meet people, build relationships, and in ways judge a person.  It has defied what some would call the good old ways of communication and social networking, and possibly created major problems soon to be realized. Myspace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-created network of friends, personal profiles, groups, movements for causes, photos, and also serves as a music and video data base for young teenagers and adults. In doing so it is a company that makes its money completely on advertising. This creates the never-ending stop for creative new ways to get people “hooked” on the internet and computers in general.  Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly argue in their piece, Television addiction is No Mere Metaphor, “that along with television, we are slaves to the computer screen and often feel better when playing on a computer or interacting with people in online situations.” This idea seems very comprehendible in the youth of today but has left the majority in a toss up over the recent change in communication.
            Online communication is the fastest growing method of communication ever experienced and is no where near a point of stopping.  Myspace, which is owned by Fox Interactive Media, was in 2006 the largest social networking site in the United States.  It is a web site that is free to join and encourages people to build a profile about themselves to broadcast to the world in an effort to let people identify with the “real you.”  No longer are hours of human interaction necessary to discover what a particular person of your choice is interested in, what there family is like, where they are from or what they dislike in others.  Users are asked to create lists of favorite books, movies, or music for example, in an effort to match them with others that have common interests. Often times some people spend hours cataloging their interests online in hopes to give people a better understanding of their emotional side.  Usually, or in the past, these efforts were satisfied by communication with other human beings on a physical basis.  If you wanted to get to know someone or ask them questions about their lives it involved face to face conversation or at the least verbal dialog on a telephone.  Talking on the phone to some takes to much time or is viewed as an outdated method of effective communication.  Now days, people are able to connect to networking sites such as myspace on their phone and in doing so are almost creating a new language of communication.  The proper way of speaking the English language is being forgotten or at least ignored in most cases and text only communication denies us the chance to read body language.  This can often lead miscommunication and misinterpretation of someone’s ideas.  This new aged crave has not only affected the youth of today but the working class as well in a way that certain companies are instituting online social networking sites in an effort to effectively bring together their employees as a team.  Other employers have chosen a different path and gone so far as banning networking sites to their employees that access computers because they feel people get sucked into the computer almost and will lose track of time and not perform at their job.

This sign posted at select offices in an effort to stop their employees from spending all their time “online chatting.”
            This new addiction to online peer bonding has created a large scale movement in advertising over the last couple years.  Myspace’s ability to store mass amounts of data about a person’s online tendencies and likes/dislikes enables it to incorporate behavioral targeting programs thus making it a prime location for business advertising.  This software tracks the most frequent sites visited and then selects a product to advertise to you that it predicts you would be interested in.  To a business that sells music equipment, the ability to target users who search for music at a rate higher than regular users proves to be a much more effective way of advertising.  The same can be said for example, on campaign party advertising or fashion design advertising. In August 2006, according to Google the online search engine, Google signed a $900 million deal with Myspace to provide a Google search facility and advertising on Myspace.

This vast amount of money creates and on going battle of ways to “suck us in” to online networking and peer bonding type sites.  Myspace along with its closest competitor Facebook, are each acquiring approximately 230,000 new users per day taking over communication and forever changing our lives.  Think to the future only five years and it would not be crazy to say that the majority of people worldwide could possibly use the internet as their main means of communication.  Even in everyday situations like going to the coffee shop one can now get online and interact with people they would not be able to see or talk to unless online.  And when they do interact online, often these individuals talk in a manor not usually associated with the individual.  Often, people feel more comfortable hidden behind their computer not being forced to come face to face with the person they are communicating with.  My question is how can you know who someone truly is when most act differently to you when you’re physically there as apposed to just online chatting?  I do not believe you can.  It seems to be that you would only see a side of a person that they wanted you to see.  Body language reading is out of the question.  Often times nonverbal communication such as body language, is as important if not more important than verbal communication.  This aspect of communication can not be addressed when communication is limited to text only and therefore create miss communications and sometimes create confusion problems. Advances in technology are even enabling such social networks to be accessed on cell phones creating an easier and larger population to reach out to.
        
Here Myspace is being accessed on a cell phone, a program created by Helio cell phones.

            I feel that even though widespread speculation exists over our dramatic need for social networking Myspace and other networking sites are here to stay and maybe for the best.  While sometimes people can go too far on their personal disclosures to the online public and in some cases people even go as far as cyber bullying, this new social technology has proven to be very helpful.  In the not to distant past keeping up with former high school friends of old business colleagues were often hard tasks, now both are things of ease.  The internet has enabled us to improve weak relationships with others that often are to hard to do based on the limited interaction with the individual.  No longer must we be a slave to the distance of a friend or relative.  Interaction is now limited only to the ability of you to put your thoughts and true feelings into words.  More often then not the gap of space in communication from a first hand to basis to online interaction enables us to write/rewrite our feelings in an effort to produce our personal view of the most effective way to communicate our ideas.

These ways may/may not be for the best and often some people find themselves in situations where they could be interacting with people around them but still find themselves trapped in their life on the computer.  These characteristics are often mirrored in many college class rooms where numerous students instead of note taking and following along with class are chatting with friends from different schools or people in different class rooms often on the same campus.
Here we have people in an online class and instead of working, get caught on myspace.

While their communication might not always hinder the student, for example when a students share homework information or talk about class, the likelihood of these activities are often less than the odds they wont get off course and “surf” to another site.  I deeply feel that a real connection to another human being can only be achieved by understanding that person based on communication that is for a majority physical face-to-face dialog. We must in one way or another go back to the ways of our parents and their parents and interact with each other on an intimate personal level if we want to achieve positive healthy relationships.

My childhood was one full of hard choices.  I grew up in New York City and I was not always in situations my mother would approve of.  I remember to this day the first time I was asked to help commit an actual crime.  I was in 2^nd grade and the idea of all the chips and candy I could eat soundctoed awesome at the time but I couldn’t pull myself to go through with it, thankfully.  It seemed like even as when I was growing up I was torn between two worlds.

I started playing sports when I was old enough to run around. It started with baseball, well T ball actually, but quickly transitioned into ice hockey.  A lot of my friends at the time or at least kids in my class had just started playing and it seemed as if I was the only one not able to skate.  This had to, I mean had to change.  Even at 5 I felt this need to fit in with the crowd and be “one of the guys.”   My motivation quickly changed after I started playing ice hockey from wanted to fit in, to wanting to get better and better.  It was such a fun sport and even as a young kid I could already see I had a lot of skill and potential.  I remember wanting to play hockey everyday and if there wasn’t any ice time at the rink, we would scrape together as many people as we could and play roller hockey.   My new friends/teammates seemed to be all I was concerned about.   I no longer felt like I needed to fit in.  I was happy playing hockey no matter who was there by my side.  I never thought I would have like playing hockey as much as I did but I was getting better and it was a great way to meet new people.  However, as much as I played, ever season that went by, I still felt that my real passion wasn’t getting as much attention as it deserved.  Skateboarding was at this time and has been forever my one real obsession.

I started skateboarding at about the time I could walk, it even kept me from learning to ride a bike until I was in middle school.  Not only did skateboarding provide me with a method of transportation but also a constant relieve for hours upon hours of boredom.  I started finding new friends in middle school who were unlike the ones from my past.  These guys didn’t want to play team sports and often had very poor decisions reaching from one end of the spectrum to the other.  Some of them, if they weren’t skateboarding, could get sidetracked easily and a few would often make pretty bad decisions.  It’s hard to call people that mug a stranger or steal from a convenience store your friend.  However, like me, they loved skateboarding and that was the side of them the showed to me.  I remember waking up at least 2 hours before school every day just so I could go out side and practice how to ollie up the curb.  I could tell at the very beginning that this was my real passion.  It was definitely not however my mom’s passion.  To her, skateboarding was a crime.  She believed all of the other parents that told her I was a bad kid and that all I did was loiter around different establishments waiting to start trouble. This of course was false, but my mom was not one to question someone who was feeding her information about her only son’s whereabouts and extra curricular activities.  She viewed skateboarding as my excuse to leave the house till way past dinner time and never really believed it to be what my friends and I were actually doing.  To her it was the same as being in a gang.  I remember coming home from my first contest that was outside of the city and getting a home drug test.  It might have been because Chris and I both lied to our parents telling them we were staying at the others house for the weekend, but I thought it was crazy.  I mean 6^th graders on drugs.  I guess anything is possible but it just wasn’t the case.  This view stayed with my mom all the way up until 9^th grade when I started having more money than I knew what to do with. Again out came the drug test.

After successfully passing ever test she had ever given me I finally was able to convince her I was different.  I wasn’t the kid she thought I was, mixed up in drugs, juvenile criminal, no goals, and in her eyes no real way to convey my skills and potential for doing great things.  Sure some kids skateboard and smoke pot and act like idiots but I never thought I could make it to where I wanted to be if I went back to my old ways of wanting to conform to my friends.  I made up my mind in middle school to pursue skateboarding in competition and that meant a lot of hard work and hours committed to getting better.  This goal could not be achieved if all I did was hang around with my friends and do drugs and get into trouble.  My mom finally started believing that I wasn’t a hoodlum running the streets with every skateboarding competition that I took her to, and it actually helped us become closer.  In a way, skateboarding was what I needed to stay on the right path which of course had to end one day.  I can say nevertheless, without a doubt, that I will never again be the person that wants to fit into the crowd.  I want to be that guy that makes others change their wardrobe and the way they act.  Conformity has proven to me to only give you short term happiness and a false sense of approval.

“Conformity is that jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

-John F. Kennedy in an address to the UN General Assembly, September 25, 1961