Globalization of Facebook- Feature

What do you consider the typical Facebook user? I see high school and college aged people and young professionals, showing off pictures of the latest party they attended and broadcasting their daily lives through statuses. Most are American or Western European. Though this demographic once ruled the website, nowadays anyone and everyone can have a profile on Facebook and behind the daily banter and toil of the poster-Facebook user, there are more and more people, of unexpected ages and places logging on to the website.

Facebook filtered down to my public high school when I was sixteen, my ‘friends’ on the website were fellow classmates and the occasional out of town friend from summer camp or friend’s siblings that were older and in college. Over the last few years I have traveled and moved, and my facebook ‘friends’ now include some interesting characters; my host-grandmother and seven year old host-cousin in Cairo, some of my friend’s parents, old teachers and aunts and uncles. The globalization of Facebook, though often mocked, (as you can be ‘friends’ and get daily status updates from Barack Obama;) is also ushering in a new era of communication that is truly a great thing. As the world seems to get smaller with the help of technology, one can remain close to someone on the other side of the world.

A couple miles separate the one room house made of clay and dried red mud that Veronica Njuguna grew up in on an inherited Kenyan plain to the city of Nakuru, where she attends University. To get to the city Veronica walks, following a dirt road traveled more by wagons and donkeys than actual automobiles. It takes about half an hour and she enjoys the serenity of the landscape, while walking she plays with thoughts and gets lost in fantasizes; getting an A on her Swahili test, (her native language is Embu, a tribal language, English and French she studies next,) the possibility of one day working for the United Nations, or opening a health clinic in Nakuru, or getting married and having babies. These are the thoughts she has on days when she is walking to and from classes, only three days a week, though she takes the walk to Nakuru up to six times a week. On the other three days her thoughts and daydreams are more about friend requests and the possibility of seeing an old photo, the post of a friend from across the world saying ‘Hi’ or even asking her to be part of an article about the globalization of a certain website. On the days when she doesn’t have class Veronica will still take the trip to her University’s computer lab to check her Facebook profile.

Veronica is 21 years old and is absolutely beautiful. I knew her at 18, wrapped in jackets and sweatshirts, scarves and hats freezing in the province of Stellenbosch, South Africa. It was winter there, and though the Americans and Europeans in our summer academy were only a little chilly, the weather cold but comfortable, like mid November, the Africans in our class were experiencing chills and cold wind and the funny way your teeth chatter for the first time in their lives.

Veronica created a Facebook during the summer academy. It seemed the perfect medium for her to keep in touch with all her new friends and also see the hundreds of pictures taken by everyone else during the summer, memories that would not be as permanent if she were to only see the pictures from the two disposable cameras she brought to document the two month experience.

Veronica is part of the rising and often discounted Facebook community, those who are certainly not the poster users for Facebook, but still add to it’s millions of users and are using the site in new ways.

Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerman and began being used by Harvard students in Febuary 2004. Soon the website, which became accessible to other Ivy League colleges, and by 2006 was used in most universities and high schools throughout the United States. User’s became part of a ‘network,’ and at first had to be invited to join and confirmed by a user in their school, thus membership was exclusive only to students. After the website gained popularity cities, companies and regions became networks, and soon after no network was required at all. Now Facebook users number in the millions and stretch incredible spaces in user location and age.

“To keep in touch is such a gift. I get to see my friends grow even though I am in Kenya,” Veronica said, “and when the day comes that I can go visit them, or they come to see me and I show them Kenya, it will not be that different because though we’re not together we are still in each others lives.”

Though being Facebook friends hardly constitutes the intimacy and connection that being a part of someone’s life day in and day out does, when you are far away from loved ones it is a very inexpensive and easy way to keep in touch.

It doesn’t take much digging to find the unconventional facebook user, though their use seems to be becoming the conventional. For instance, I am Facebook friends with my step-mother Marianne Holtermann. The vernacular of the typical facebook community calls this next action ‘creeping.’ Marianne is a Danish woman who has lived in the US for over twenty years, and her Facebook wall is filled with daily correspondence with friends and family back in Denmark. She has posted a family picture from her last visit home; in it several generations assemble, two elderly women, middle-aged siblings and young grandchildren. I would assume that given the age and location of the people in the photo, it would only be posted in Marianne’s photo album, but when scrawling to the bottom of the photo you can see that every single person in the photo, save her two year old niece, has a tag, linking the photo to their own profiles. So there they are- the two octogenarians, accountants and stay at home mother’s in Copenhagen, their nine-year-old son. They all have Profiles on the website and use them every day.

“To call internationally even seldomly would be so expensive,” said Marianne, who urged her family in Northern Europe to create the profiles. “All of the features of Facebook are perfect in maintaining our relationships. We can talk and share photos, and even play games together.” Marianne states her both her mother and stepmother who are best friends and live together are addicted to the Facebook fad game of ‘Mafia Wars.’ Marianne makes a annual trip to Denmark, and finds Facebook is very critical for logistical things as well, like planning her trip and getting gifts. “We can talk and chat and message quicker than through email, and they can let me know what they want and need up until the day I leave. There have been times I’ve had to stop right before I got to JFK to buy a few pounds of Dunkin Doughnuts coffee,” said Marianne.

And for those who are separated from family and do not get to visit home as much as they wish, Facebook is a tool to be a presence in daily life from afar. Monchilou Lanticse has lived in New York for over six years. She came to the United States from the Philippines after marrying and has since gotten a divorce and is now a full time Nurse. Monchilou makes a comfortable salary, though she sends most of it back to her parents, sisters and nieces and nephews who are struggling in the Philippines. It’s a sacrifice she’s happy to make, and she can see how her financial help has benefited her family every day, through Facebook.

“I get to see pictures of my nieces and nephews, they’re wearing nice school clothes and they look healthy, happy,” Monchilou said. “Sometimes in town my sister will scan me their school work and drawings. They’re learning to speak English just as well as Tagalog and that’s really important to me.”

Monchilou doesn’t get to visit the Philippines often and is gracious that she can be so far away and not miss her nieces and nephews growing up. “I record videos to them and post them on the site and they can post them back. My sister posts pictures very often so I do feel like I am there for their childhood. I couldn’t say that if we didn’t use Facebook the way we do. I would miss them growing up, I am so thankful that’s different.”

Though being able to connect to each other these ways may not have been what Mark Zuckerman originally intended, Facebook is quickly becoming the way of the world. First only displayed in English, Facebook can now be used in 43 different languages and over 60 being translated and ready to use soon, according to Globalbydesign.com. This website also claims that more than 40% of Facebook users are not using English and that over 70% of Facebook users do not live in the United States. From Afrikaans to Zulu, and many languages in between, people in the Non-English speaking world can be comfortable with using Facebook, and many language students change their language for practice, (my profile is in Arabic, that way I can pretend that going on Facebook is also somewhat studious.)

There is also significant backlash towards Facebook. The website is often inaccessible in The People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh. Though users in these places often find ways around the blockades. Isaac Earl, an American student studying Arabic in Syria sums up his daily routine of sneaking past internet blocks to get on to Facebook by saying, “It’s more than just a website. It’s my friends and family. Nowadays it’s an extension of myself. Until this government realizes that, which I think they will, I just have to go for it.”