Facebook has become, for many, a vital mean of communication by which users utilize to initiate, affirm, and maintain their relationships. This is essentially what is meant by the term “social grooming.” It is the fundamental and primary use of Facebook. Though true in most of society, college students in particular, often find it difficult to initiate any kind of relationship while attending universities, and it is perhaps the most important communication skill in developing relationships.

Facebook has eased this process by creating particular interest groups that users can join to meet others seemingly like themselves, thus eliminating the tedious and sometimes overwhelming task of finding those most similar to you. Before any Facebook friendship is deemed serious, users are required to publicly assure this particular bond to the public eye of their network. It is similar in nature to a wedding announcement in a newspaper. Initially, the friendship request relaxed typical relationship assurances and made it virtually effortless to be considered someone’s friend.

Recently, the friendship request confirmation is taken very seriously and with more consideration of the trustworthiness of that person, because of the potentially vast amount of personal and sometimes incriminating information on a user’s profile. It is through the relational maintenance function that societal communication influences Facebook. Societal communication is able to able to have this influence due to its unlimited demand for more efficient, customized and convenient upgrades to quench its curiosity.

This demand has influenced Facebook to evolve into a stalker’s paradise, providing anyone with a user’s personal information, just short of his or her social security number. But, this is all at the user’s disclosure, which leads us to Facebook’s secondary function, the presentation of the self.

Some argue that the word Facebook can function as a verb, and that we “Facebook” to construct a “social me”, otherwise defined as an identity. Mead, a social philosopher believed that, “it is through social interaction and socially embedded public or semi-public action that we affirm our relations, construct our status and ultimately produce the social ‘me’.” Users utilize Facebook in the very manner that Mead describes the construction of the “social me.”

Facebook users are in a continual attempt to present themselves through photo alums, profile pictures, interests, religion, race, their wall, and even their status. Facebook has encouraged the use of a slightly more complex “I feel statement,” in the form of a user’s status update. For example, a status could read, “ John Smith is… happy, sad, doing homework.”

There is no limit as to what you can say or how often you can change it. Many users find it necessary to abuse their status rights and utilize their status for emotional management or a GPS point, revealing their every movement to Facebook. One could argue that these abusers may have an identity conflict and dispute within their internal communication, which compels them to say, “Look at me!”

Until Next time -