An Attention Binge

This was a speculative essay I recently wrote about a new trend in today's media most of us, if not all of us, are familiar with. It's not meant to be exaustive in regards to providing all of the possible explanations for the trend. It's just meant for infotainment mostly.

Let’s say we’re all studying at an LDS university somewhere in the middle of our lengthy academic careers. We’re living near or on campus around thousands of other people our age within walking distance of our house or apartment. Everyone, whether they want to admit it or not, craves some sort of social interaction or at least a bit of attention now and again. For the normal human being, a college campus is the glorious fulfillment of that need and desire. Setting all hypothetical scenarios aside, we are indeed on a university campus with limitless opportunities in which to help us grow and spread out socially, making friends and, if we get lucky, find that special someone.

One way in which we achieve this level of social bliss comes directly from the fact that this university and the way it’s set up seem to encourage sociality greatly. We’re all separated into wards and encouraged to meet and interact with as many of our ward members as possible. Various callings we receive sometimes force that upon us. We’re further separated into FHE groups, creating an even more intimate setting which assists us even further in developing close friendships with our roommates and other apartments full of students of the opposite sex. Someone high up doesn’t seem content to just let us all be friends, it seems. The classes at BYU-Idaho are small and intimate, allowing for plenty of personal communication between students, while professors seem to purposefully assign a lot of group projects in order to further enhance our friendship creation.

With so many opportunities to meet people and expand our horizons, I find it difficult to believe that electronic assistance in socializing, other than the use of a cell phone, is necessary. I refer to the relatively new website, Facebook, which claims to be a social tool but ends up becoming the social life of many a student. Facebook has become a pervasive part of our society, especially among college-age U.S. citizens. Why, I ask, has it become this way? Especially, I add, since dialing a number on a cell phone is far easier and more convenient, and physically visiting someone is far more personal and appealing.

Whenever I used to meet someone and wanted to spend some time with him or her, I’d ask that person for their number. This was the “traditional method,” if you will, which was further streamlined with the use of the cell phone by being able to input the number directly into your digital phone book. It made number swapping nice and fast. And up until about 2005, it was also the norm. However, I was out of touch with society for two years while I served a mission in Mexico, during which a lot of our technology changed, and a great number of trends were introduced. Facebook officially launched on February 4, 2004, after which it quickly became such a widespread phenomenon that now over 60 million people have an active account (“Facebook”). It’s also ranked by Alexa Internet, Inc., an internet media research company, as the seventh most trafficked website in the world, just behind such juggernauts as Yahoo.com and Youtube.com (“Alexa”). Now, when I need to obtain the contact information of someone, they simply respond, “don’t worry about it, look me up on Facebook,” as if to say, “giving you my number isn’t worth the minuscule amount of effort it would take for me to speak ten numbers aloud.”


The American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, developed in 1954 a concept called the Hierarchy of Needs. This hierarchy sheds some light on a person’s priorities in life and how it relates to virtually everything he or she does. In order for someone to put some effort into doing something there must always be a reason. In one way or another, the person doing the action believes he or she will be benefited in some way. No one does something for nothing. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs teaches us a bit about why people do the things they do, especially when at first glance it appears rather ridiculous and absurd. This may help us understand why the Facebook addiction is sweeping the world.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is set up as follows:
1. Physiological Needs
These include everyone’s need to sleep, get exercise, bodily needs, as well as food and water. Before a person’s priorities move onto the next level in the Hierarchy of Needs, the previous needs must be fulfilled.

2. Safety Needs
These include a feeling of being secure and protected. Also included in this category is a feeling of peace and comfort, and orderly surroundings.

3. Love Needs
Now, this is interesting, don’t you think? After one has achieved the absolute basics of human life—physiological needs and safety needs—the next things he or she turns to is social acceptance and the love of others. Getting out of our apartments every once and a while is far more important than it sometimes seems. If it ranks just below feeling safe and secure, than it must rank far above countless activities we partake in every day that seem to us, at the moment, as some of the most important things in our lives.

Facebook caters to this desire in the extreme. When one uses Facebook, it’s not like picking up the phone and hearing someone’s voice then subsequently responding. The point of Facebook is to put your best face forward; expressing yourself in a manner that you feel best pleases those who visit your profile. You choose to customize your profile with those things you feel will best represent you to others and make them believe that you’re an interesting person. You choose to upload only the photos that make you look skinnier, more muscular, and, ultimately, more appealing. If you have the technology, you may even doctor the photos just a bit in an attempt to further alter your self-image. Your Facebook profile, in an almost subconscious manner, becomes a reflection of yourself, acting as an ego-booster and confidence steroid. You catch yourself staring at your own profile as much as those of your friends.

Another reason for the Facebook addiction is that most people, if they’re brave enough to admit it, often feel anxious when placed in social situations. This doesn’t always happen, of course, but there are times when a guy wants to talk to a certain girl yet can’t seem to go through with it. He’s simply scared that he’ll say something or do something that won’t make him look like the coolest guy in town. Talking to someone face to face is a process that doesn’t allow for a lot of pre-meditation. It’s almost always spontaneous and keeps us on our toes. Facebook allows you to socialize, albeit on a much more shallow level, but with plenty of time to think about the various consequences of each communication you make. A guiding principle of communication is that you can’t not communicate. Even if you’re not actively writing messages to the people you know, you’re always communicating in one way or another, and Facebook let’s you know exactly what it is that you’re communicating.

It is the opinion of this author that in the absence of proper communications, people are becoming less social and more obsessed with ways in which they can fulfill #3 in the Hierarchy of Needs without having to leave their comfort zone. Heck, there are those that don’t even come near the edge of their comfort zone, feeling content with removing themselves with any or all direct communications with those that surround them. Granted, these people aren’t all that common, but if they exist now, there will be more and more of these people in the future as the technology permitting them to live in this manner continues to improve.

Facebook is, by no means, a bad thing. But I think that, as with almost everything, it can be abused and changed from its intended purpose into something debilitating. Facebook was designed to be a “social tool,” and I hope that it can always remain just that—a “tool.” It becomes something far more diabolical when it becomes the center of our social lives.

Works Cited:

“Facebook.” Wikipedia 6 Mar. 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Alexa.com 6 Mar. 2008
http://www.alexa.com/