Earlier this year Facebook announced that its worldwide membership has reached the staggering number of 500 million users.
At the same time it has purportedly been responsible for facilitating the success of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt – which resulted in the arrest of Hosni Mubarak and the exile of Ben Ali.
These are undoubtedly significant developments in and of themselves, yet one has to wonder: what the value of Facebook is to our development as a generation of technologically integrated individuals?
Upon a survey of the research on college students and their consistent and heavy use of Facebook, with this particular question in mind, it’s apparent that the impact on our social capital is no small matter.
But before going further, let me explain, in brief, what “social capital” is as it’s largely a jargon from the realm of academia.
To be concise, “social capital” is, according to Scheufele and Shah in the journal Communication Research, the “elements of social life as networks, norms, and trust that provide the means for citizens to resolve collective action problems.”
These “elements” consist of the following criterions: life satisfaction, personal well-being, social trust, active participation in politics and civic participation.
The first two are pretty easy to understand as they signify our perception of our satisfaction with our life.
“Social trust”, on the other hand, represents the level of comfort that each of us puts in one another.
Political and civil participation is defined, by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady in their book, Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics, as “activity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action —either directly by affecting the making or implementation of public policy or indirectly by influencing the selection of people who make those policies.”
With our criterions understood, in basic terms, we can now move forward with exploring the impact of Facebook.
According to research conducted by Valenzuela, Park, and Kee of University of Texas at Austin in 2008, college students feel a strong sense of satisfaction with their lives in terms of their social trust for their Facebook “friends” and their sense of political and civic participation via grassroots campaigns and online discussions of major political issues.
Interestingly, there are more female undergraduate students on Facebook in terms of number and participation that is split at roughly 54% female and 46% male.
72% of all undergraduate users have parents who finished college and graduate school.
The conclusions are interesting as they suggest that Facebook was designed to help college students to organize to confront the problems of our day, especially for organizations that dispense news and pursue the challenging field of journalism:
“First, and foremost, online social networks are useful structures for connecting people, allowing them to create content and participate in public affairs in a meaningful way. Second, social network sites are not just a place for “hanging out” but are useful tools for collective action. Thus, if news organizations are interested in elevating public life, social network sites provide a useful example. On the other hand, news sites wanting to adopt a social network structure face several challenges. Perhaps the biggest one is demonstrating in which ways audience participation can make a difference in public affairs. In other words, media professionals need to consider if news sites with a SNS structure can emulate the benefits that users report they obtain from traditional social networks such as Facebook.”
To me, Facebook is a human network that has potential to positively shape the future of this world, but with notable limitations.
First, it’s a platform to raise awareness and interest in certain issues and is ultimately an ad hoc forum that doesn’t guarantee sustained commitment to solving a particular issue.
Second, there are simply too many distractions on Facebook for it to be effective at organizing college students, whose lives are generally defined by passing interests.
Third, the participation cannot be expected to go beyond a word or two in support of a particular cause or a small donation to a charity issue.
Fourth, trust and satisfaction created by Facebook are shallow measures of the effectiveness of Facebook.
Lastly, there is few if any instance where an in-depth effort was formed to tackle the issues of the day.
Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali may be gone, but the trouble in their respective countries remains. Organizing is a strength of Facebook, but reform is more complicated than that.
It requires that a community or society be committed to a sustained and constructive dialogue via a human network that brings pragmatic ideas forward.
In conclusion, Facebook can be helpful, but ultimately not practical for tackling most pressing issues that go beyond a localized issue relating to problems contributing to our relative social capital.