Facebooking with Caution

Margaret Anderson
Gamma Phi Beta

Let’s face it, we all have abused Facebook before, and will continue to do so as long as we continue to have schoolwork to procrastinate and people to stalk. I might be one of the guiltiest Facebook abusers seeing as I’m writing this very article, it’s 2 a.m., and I’m Facebook chatting instead of studying for the exam I have in six hours. With all the time that we waste on Facebook, the least we can do is make sure we abuse it right. There are just a few Facebook sins that make me cringe every time I scroll through the feed. Here are the things that I hope you can avoid while wasting your precious time.

First of all, cool it with the statuses. No one cares how much studying for your test sucks, how funny your girlfriends are, and most importantly, those Taylor Swift song lyrics don’t tug at the heartstrings of your 1000 “friends.” The Facebook status is one of the most frequently abused components to Facebook. There’s nothing worse than people clogging your main page with stuff that you could not care less about. So just remember, before you post, ask yourself, do people really care?

Another thing to be careful about is the infamous Facebook break-up. Making your relationship “Facebook official” can be exciting, sure, but is it worth that awkward post break-up moment when everyone sees that little broken heart on their news feed? With that being said, there’s nothing jerkier than when people “like” Facebook break-ups. It’s literally cyber salt on an already fresh wound.

Something to always keep in mind in order to avoid becoming a Facebook sinner is the beauty of Facebook chat. This tool enables you to have real, private conversations on the book. This tool also makes it even more annoying when people have entire personal conversations on statuses, wall posts, etc. Seeing a status with 50+ comments on it between two people always makes me wonder why the two haven’t bothered just signing onto chat and talking there.

Facebook is a beautiful thing, but other social networking sites don’t translate well on it. In other words, hash tags are basically pointless on their Twitter home, and they are ridiculously pointless on Facebook. It was funny for about a second, but the whole hash tag trend has gone on a little too long. So, save the hash tags for Twitter, where I still don’t get the point of it, but at least Twitter is where it’s meant to be.

We all spend way too much time on Facebook, and that’s not going to change any time soon, but the least we can do is make sure we don’t annoy all of our fellow stalkers with eye roll inducing activity. So, think before you post…Happy procrastinating!

Margaret is a sophomore studying advertising. You may contact her at margander520@gmail.com.