Free Facebook: Positively Satisfying Essay Example

Several years ago, on a visit to the US, I met a girl, Nuria, at a friend’s birthday party. We had many similar interests, as well as a similar sense of humor, and hit it off. We both felt a connection immediately. Although I had not yet moved from the UK, and was just visiting family friends at the time, it was a friendship we were both sad to lose. Thanks to the increased connectivity associated with social media such as Facebook, we didn’t have too lose our friendship. Nuria stayed in touch via messages, occasionally commenting on each other’s life events, until I returned to the US to study full-time and we were able to reconnect. We now keep in touch almost daily through Facebook, and see each other once a month to socialize in person.
Similar to the friend I mentioned above, there is another important person with whom I use Facebook to keep in touch while away- my best friend in the UK. While many friends drift apart during the busy college years, because we both have Facebook, despite having an entire ocean between us, we are still able to enjoy our daily chats. Just as Facebook helped me to nurture and grow a friendship in my non-native country, it grants me the ability to nurture friendships back home while studying in a foreign country. Thanks to Facebook, I am never more than one chat message away from my best friend, whom I have had since the age of eight.
Another example of a positive experience I’ve had on Facebook is that of rekindling friendships with people I thought were ‘lost’- i.e., people I assumed had gone their own way and that I wouldn’t see again. In middle school, I befriended a girl named Grace. She was friendly, kind, soft-spoken, and unfortunately, although we ate lunch today every day and passed notes back and forth during hundreds of boring classes, sharing gossip and our crushes, she moved to France when I was twelve. Although I had long ago forgotten about Grace and given up my adolescent hope on our paths crossing again someday, thanks to a mutual friend on Facebook, her face appeared on my “People You May Know” column last year and we were able to reconnect. While we are both different people now, Grace is still friendly and kind, and we have been lucky to share our stories and our crushes again.
Aside from just nurturing friendships, Facebook has also helped to do the opposite of what many claim it does - it has kept me from feeling lonely when moving to another continent and country to go to school, but enabling me to stay close with my family and friends back home and feel involved in their lives despite the distance. According to Sifferlin, although “social media may exacerbate loneliness among those with isolation issues, it could also have the ability to expand a person’s social circle and serve as a conduit for curing that loneliness — if used in the right way” (2013). According to Sifferlin and other experts, the right way is to be active and involved on Facebook rather than a passive bystander (2013). Keeping in daily, active touch by messaging friend, commenting on their photos and updates, and posting updates of my own to share with loved ones back home has absolutely helped to ease the loneliness and homesickness I first felt when moving thousands of miles from my loved ones.
Facebook is a social media platform that is equally praised and equally criticized. It is undeniable that facebook enables people to remain connected, more easily, than they were in the past. It serves as a way to not just share photos and stories, but to remain in direct personal contact with almost anyone in the world. Although, as Rosen claims, “the pleasure of publicizing our connections on social networking sites is inextricably linked to the anxiety we experience about the meaning of those connections and what they reveal about the value of our offline lives,” (2012) just because a connection is made or nurtured mainly via Facebook does not mean that it will be devoid of meaning, or will become a source of anxiety for us. Our world is becoming more and more global each day, and Facebook is one of the easiest ways in which the everyday person can easily nurture the connections they make with others near and far, from both our past and present. Given the equal amounts of criticism and praise that the site receives, one could make the argument that like beauty, the benefits and drawbacks of Facebook are in the eye of the beholder (user). For this user, the experience has been, above all, positive.

Works Cited

Rosen, Christina. “Electronic Intimacy.” The Wilson Quarterly. The Wilson Quarterly, 2012.
Web. 12 April 2015.
Sifferlin, Alexandra. “Two Faced Facebook: We Like It, But it Doesn’t Make Us Happy.” Time
Magazine. Time Magazine, 15 Aug 2013. Web. 12 April 2015.