Looking for something new
Nadiia Petryk
Today it is nearly impossible to find a high school or college student that hasn’t heard of online social networks like MySpace or Facebook. These sites experienced a real popularity boom after appearing several years ago. In August 2006, MySpace officially announced the opening of their 100 millionth account.
At that time it seemed like the growth of gigantic networks would never stop. But will it?
Today it seems like after the initial excitement, many students have started to change their minds and notice more and more imperfections in social networks.
Amanda Rasmussen, a student of the Art Department at MCC, never really got interested in MySpace or Facebook. She prefers to communicate through online forums or email.
“Social networks are a little too public. Since there are so many people who go out there, they can find you randomly, where with the forums you are usually under a guest name, and with email you know the person you are contacting,” said Rasmussen.
MCC student Nicole Enie is going through the Interior Design program. She has had a MySpace page for a year and a half. Today she uses it every day mostly to stay in contact with her extended family, but she doesn’t think she will use it for too long in the future.
“I think there is more drama then anything out there. People with pathetic lives talk about nonsense. I think MySpace will eventually fade out. I’ll use it for a little bit more and then be done with it,” said Enie.
Art Department student Keith Chretien is also not very interested in social networks.
“I feel that it could be helpful, but I also feel that it gets kind of silly, a little too childish,” Chretien explained.
Bryant Valencia, a student of the Business Administration program, has had an account with MySpace for 6 months and uses it to communicate with his friends from the U.S and Mexico.
Even though he enjoys it very much today, he feels that it’s just a temporary interest that he will not have time for once he is out of school.
“I’m going to be in my career and I’m not going to have time for it,” he said.
Emily, another art student never used MySpace and is not interested in it at all.
“I feel like it cheapens people. They expose themselves too much and don’t leave too much for the imagination of who people are. I think it’s a cheap way to communicate and get to know people. It’s just not my thing,” she said.
But of course social networks have their loyal fans too.
Sherri Canup, student of the Exercise Science program, is happy with the services provided by MySpace. She has had an account with MySpace for three years and is fairly sure she will use it in future.
Diana Dike is going through the basic program at MCC and has had a MySpace account for over two years and checks it twice a week to communicate with her friends and family out of state.
“I think I’ll stop using it only if it stops existing,” she said.
The future of social networks is as unpredictable as the interests of its unpredictable target audience – high school and college students.
Their preferences change extremely fast. Something that is very trendy today might be absolutely forgotten tomorrow.
The perfect example of a quick rise and decrease of popularity is the social networking site Friendster.
It appeared in 2003, became popular with more than 20 million visitors and already in 2005 slipped below 1 million users.
