1000 Tweets a Night for the Postless Man

Are Twitter and Facebook controlling the lives of their users? According to Facebook's website, there are currently more than 500 million active users, with about 50% of the active users signing on daily. These active users spend a combined total of over 700 billion minutes per month on the site. How do so many people manage to spend so much time on a single website? Garrett Konecke, 19, believes that "Facebook users are interested in upping their popularity to increase their statuses in the real world. Users feel like they need to be online because they don't want to be left out of the social loop. Because they see this as a productive, they do not see a problem with spending countless hours online." One controversial aspect of Facebook is the lack of default privacy settings on the site. Many users neglect to hide personal information and photos, leaving their photos open for complete strangers to view. This invasion of privacy has come to be known as "creeping." Jamie Williams, 16, offers a more seasoned Facebook user's opinion on creeping. "Users like to have constant updates, because they like to know what's going on. They don't have to actually talk to someone, or even be friends with someone, to know what's going on in their life. That's why we all creep so much." Although it may seem that some users seek multitudinous updates, there is such a thing as too many updates. The micro-blogging/social networking site, Twitter, presents this issue. Ally Yuscavage, 16, believes that "Twitter is just another reason that people are glued to technology all day long...for some reason people feel the need to tell everyone every mundane detail about their lives, when they should be out there doing something." An individual may post over a hundred "tweets" (Twitter posts)  per day without receiving a single page view. Why continue posting then? On Twitter, users may find some specific field that interests them and follow pages relating to that field so that they are constantly updated with the latest information. Those annoying "tweets" never have to be seen if one selectively chooses feeds to follow. Facebook, on the other hand, is a useful tool in communicating with peers, but occasional "creeping," whether you are the "creeper" or the one being creeped on, is inevitable.