Have you ever used this expression? Almost every single person who lives in an industrialized country and is either a teenager, or needs to spread a message or advertise a company has said these two words. Facebook as practically everybody knows is a social network created by Mark Zuckerberg and his three Cambridge University colleagues. It was launched in February 2004; it was originally projected for the students of Harvard, Stanford, Ivy League and Cambridge, when it became obvious that it was a very powerful way to connect between people, they decided to open it to the public, (which must be of least 13 years of age). In 2008 Facebook had about 100 million users, and by 2012 it reached 900 million users; about 2,35% of this “Facebook population” is Italian. As interesting as this information is, what is really Facebook for the new generation? We use Facebook for absolutely everything, from creating a group with all your classmates in it, to just chatting with your friends and expressing what you like and dislike. But are these the real reasons why we use Facebook? Or do we just sign up because it’s cool to be on Facebook? Most teenagers in fact register just because everybody does and so should you. Facebook though can also be very useful, especially if you own a smartphone (which is very common nowadays) and you can “stay connected wherever you go”. For example organizing an event, remembering people’s birthdays (I’m not going to say friends because most users among their “friends” even have people that they’ve never met), chatting with your friends or even informing people about what you’re like, which isn’t always a good thing, though. The main reason that Facebook gives to make you sign up is “connect with the people of your life wherever you are”, which means that you can send messages, images, or do anything else with a friend or a relative who lives on the other side of the world instantly, which was unthinkable before communication systems like Facebook were invented. Anyhow, Facebook has a way of getting to teenagers around the world, and I’m not just talking about pages where you advertise a book, a movie, a TV series, an interest a sport, a location, but I’m also talking about “Memes”. Surely everybody has a vague idea of what memes are: they are comics characters with different expressions on their faces and particular catchphrases that easily work their way into a teenagers’ mind making him or her think “Oh, I’ve said/done that too”. Their official name is Rage Comic; an example is the face with the cute smile looking left and then right which is about to do something that he doesn’t want anybody to see, like ringing the bell of somebody’s house and then running away. Who hasn’t done that at least once?
Alessia Bello (IE)