What is Facebook for?
In an article for TIME, Lev Grossman talks about how Facebook is really best designed for the middle-aged, not the young. He lists 10 reasons Facebook is for ‘old fogies’ such as: it’s for finding people you’ve lost track of, we don’t get drunk and post bad pictures, people use it for business contact, we don’t want to ‘do’ anything, but just sit back read and judge, we want to share pictures of our children etc.
His article is funny, and worth a read, but it brings forward an interesting idea about just what social networks can teach us in terms of how different people view social tools. For each reason he suggests, you can see how younger target audiences could react and truthfully assert that this functionality is designed ‘just for them’.
I’m glad he can write so earnestly about ‘what’s in it for me’. It proves how far-reaching and lasting tools and channels like Facebook are. It shows how the crossing of self expression and peer group connections that social networks offer are core to being human and not just a phenomenon of Digital Natives.
