Why the use of MySpace and Facebook

Michelle Gutierrez
Professor Yerks
Comp 106
30 October 2008
Why the use of MySpace and Facebook
Technology plays a big role in our everyday lives now a day’s especially with high school and college students. The article I read MySpace and Facebook: applying the uses and gratification Theory to exploring friend-Networking sites was mainly exploring the use of these types of site. They wanted to investigate why teenagers loved these sorts of communications. They recruited college students and gave them questioners, basically asking them questions about their accounts. They also asked another group of students who did not have such accounts why they didn’t show any interest in them.
The actual users said that people who did not have accounts did not have any friends and probably did not want to keep in touch with anyone. The non account holders said that they did not feel the need to open an account there was no one pressuring them. In my opinion some people that do have accounts just like the attention because there a lot of girls and guys who post half nude pictures and talk about very personal things. It is just there need for attention, not all of the account holders do this like the article says some account holders just have the accounts to engage in online communication, maintain connection with family, friends and coworkers.
I personally don’t have a MySpace or a Facebook and I have many high school friends and people that I hang out with every weekend. In fact a lot of my friends have these types of accounts and sometimes encourage me to create one but I have never felt the need to actually do it. I can still keep my friends and talk to all of the people that I want to talk to without having to stare at a picture of them on the computer screen. Like they said in the article the actual account holders spend on average three hours online looking at their accounts or someone else’s.To me personally that is a waste of time if you spend three hours every day on your account that is 21 hours out of every week that you are wasting just staring at pictures.
Even though, many people that do not have accounts say that they do not have many friends, I do not think that is an excuse for not having an account, even if you did have many friends you don’t need to be part of its users to be normal or to be accepted by others. I don’t judge those who do have these accounts because I think it is everyone’s choice to have one or not. What I don’t think is fair is that those who do not hold accounts are judged as not having any friends or being outcasts because that is not always the case. That is why I don’t have an account because I like to use myself as an example for those who say that non account holders have no friends.